The Legend of Xanina Alizarin
by lefeyz
Summary: This intended-to-be-secret diary chronicling the events of WhileGuthixSleeps from the point of view of Xanina Alizarin; officer, lady and a Dysfunctional!Sue extraordinaire. Having the editor's notes open in another window while reading is advised.
1. Foreword by the publisher

uPublisher's Notes/u

_i__The Legend of Xanina Alizarin,_ _or Xany's Diary Hands Off, /i_such were the two titles under which I got to know the following pages, faithfully reproduced (as well as abundantly annotated) from the manuscript, a leather-bound journal formerly belonging to Xanina Alizarin, a travelling adventuress, or, as some would say, a mercenary –either way, a most complex and morally ambiguous character, whose colourful life the paying public will no doubt be shamelessly interested in.

The Legend goes as follows…

Nothing is known of the origins of our (for the want of a better word) heroine, save for that she probably was the love child of a Kinshra warlordess and a Fremmenik pirate captain, a direct descendant of the fourth-age dragon-slayer Camorra, evidently a one-sixth icyene and a third cousin, twice removed of the Mahjarrat Sliske.

Alas, with her untimely death under curious circumstances Xanina took her secrets to her grave from which she was dug out and reanimated under even curiouser ones seven days later.

But that's another story.

Rewind thirty three years back.

Evidently, she was abandoned upon birth, in the year 137, in the Burthorpe woods where she was found by a Mr Reyzed Enroy, a professional mercenary who for whatever reason adopted and raised her as his own.

Fast forward again, reader. I haven't got all day.

If Xanina's childhood had been a work of fiction, its peripetia would have occurred in 154, the year the girl turned seventeen. At that time her custodian suffered an acute moral midlife crisis and, as any decent dramatist could have foretold, retired to Taverley to learn about the ways of Guthix. It is known that in order to foreground the moral conflicts our protagonist faces, Mr Enroy advised her to follow his example and give up the path of violence and destruction.

Xanina, ever so full of her trademark contradiction and restlessness, would hear none of this and set for a life of killing stuff.

Some sixteen years, 2789 kills, two marriages, over three hundred casual sexual relationships and twenty galleons of Karamjan Rum later (yes, you are interested by now) her last journal was discovered on her bedside table at the Jolly Boar Inn, Varrock, by a Mr. Glitch, the proprietor of the said establishment. As this discovery coincided with Xanina's one week's stint of being dead, the poor landlord assumed that she had done a runner –which would have been her third that year- and considered it finders keepers and keepers sellers to highest bidders, that being the editor of this work, whom you will soon meet.

You can always count on a Pollnivian for an unintelligible prose style.

The editor in question, D.D., who wished to remain anonymous, was and is both a business acquaintance of mine and according to himself, a friend of Xanina's from years back. Having acquired the journal, he said he had wanted the life and deeds of "Xanita" known by the entire world and took up the task of editing the manuscript for print. Once finally finished, he remembered an old friend, a businessman of all trades, who might help him with having the work published…and the rest is her story.

In Pollnivneach, Kharid

Ire of Phyrrys 37, 170 of the 5th Age

Sir Liam Earon


	2. Editor's notes

uCommentary/u

1) "Karamja Overlord", a colloquial name for Karamjan rum.

2) Refers to Sir Tiffy Cashien, the head of the Order of Temple Knights.

3) Refers to Mr. Radimus Erkle, the Guildmaster of the "Legend's Guild", an employment agency for mercenaries.

4) Xanina maintained a lifelong loathing for the island of Karamja, especially the Southern, so-called non-colonised parts of it. The reason for this is not clear, but evidently was related to her experiences with the local religion, Broodoo, and its side-phenomena.

5) Reyzed "Zed" Enroy, Xanina's adoptive father, who after retiring from his life as a professional mercenary was initiated as a druid of Guthix and settled in Taverley, Asgarnia.

6) Refers to Thaerisk Cemphier a high-ranking druid of Guthix and a founding member of the Crux Eqal.

7) This refers to a set of rules Xanina had composed to guide her in life, a complete version of which remains on the frontispiece of her diary. They were:

I: Don't die.

II: Always get payment in advance.

III: Have nothing to do with Gods/spirits/demons

IV: Have nothing to do with Mahjarrat, vampyres or other greater races

V: Say no to necromancy.

VI: (while the number has been added, rule six seems to never have been written down)

As the reader will see, these turned out to be more of guidelines.

8) Namely the weapon known as the Staff of Armadyl. The lore surrounding the Staff is obscure at its best but a few certain facts remain known. According to legend the Staff originally belonged to Armadyl, a deity worshipped in the 2nd age. It appears that while the Zarosian Empire expanded, the worshippers of Armadyl declined in numbers, possibly leading to his physical presence departing from Gielinor.

The next fact in our short list is that the aforementioned deity left his favoured weapon, a staff of divine power on this plane and ordered some of his remaining worshippers to guard it. As centuries passed the cause came to be forgotten until the Staff was rediscovered –here the actual events are shrouded in veil and shadow, but the outcome is known nevertheless –and ended up in the hands of the Mahjarrat Zamorak, then the commander of the army of Zaros.

Here we re-enter the realm of solid facts: Zamorak used the Staff to kill (Diminish? Reduce? Can one kill a god?) Zaros and in the process absorbed his powers, reaching divinity himself. As any comprehensive book on the history of Gielinor will tell, due to his betrayal Zamorak was banished from Gielinor only to return a while later –this marking the beginning of the 3rd age, also known as the God Wars. It was most likely during his short banishment that the Staff was retaken by the Guardians of Armadyl and hidden in a temple in what is now known as Kandarin, where it stayed, secret and safe, until the autumn of 168, 5th Age.

9) The Mahjarrat in question is one known as Lucien, an ally of Zamorak in the 3rd Age wars, known as well for leading an attack on the city of Varrock in the year 154 of the 5th age.

10) The Lunar communication network, an obscure but evidently efficient method of long-distance communication invented on the Lunar Isle and based on conscious beings reaching each other via the "Anima Mundi".

11) As the reader may have been able to assume, the handwriting in the manuscript (alongside with spelling and coherence) grow steadily more indecipherable towards the end of this entry. And that this was not entirely due to the swinging of the hammock.

12) Besides Karamja, customs officers and organised religion Xanina Alizarin had a deep aversion towards magic and especially mistrusted teleportation. Hence she decided to rather walk the several days journey than to risk, as she once rather colourfully remarked to me, "getting stuck in the arsehole of the universe" –this of course being a reference to a common malfunction in teleportation spells, namely the teleported person being trapped in the interplanar space known as "the Abyss".

13) "The Way" -as well as the other listed names- refers to the officially untitled length of road that stretches, uninterrupted, from Burthorpe, Asgarnia, all the way to the River Salve in the south-east corner of the Kingdom of Misthalin and is often used as a metaphor for the peaceful co-existence between the two countries.

14) "The Legend of the Stone in the Cave, as translated from runic script by the board of translators of the druidic order of Taverley", the earliest remaining recounting of the discovery of the so called "Stone of Jas". This seminal document on the rediscovery of runes has since been translated into several languages as well as published as a modernised version.

The original stone on which the story was carved in runic script has, alas, been lost with time.

15) A saying or joke known to all Varrockians about the two inns of the town goes:

The Blue Moon attracts all sorts. The Jolly Boar attracts one sort, those who can't afford Blue Moon.

I shall withhold my own view on the matter but do not consider Xanina's preoccupations entirely unwarranted.

16) The following two pieces of text, as the reader can readily deduce, are not a diary entries but reports sent to and from Temple Knights Intelligence Department. Their original copies, the reprinting of which I was granted rights to by the TKID were found affixed to the journal alongside other letters, reports and scrap papers.

For those perplexed by the acronyms, CE naturally refers to the Crux Eqal, while STC is Sir Tiffy Cashien.

17) More clipped names; Mahjarrats General Khazard and Lucien, respectively.

18) For those unfamiliar with TKID shorthand, the reply reads "Teleport to Falador as soon as possible. Bring the mentioned items with you and report to Thaerisk Cemiphier."

Evidently Xanina, who had only been a Temple Knight for roughly two years, had yet to master the lingo used in their communication network.

19) There is no clarification I can provide on this ambiguous entry, but will instead console the reader with an excerpt from "Xany's handbook for infiltrating military areas", in fact an extract from a letter by Xanina to a friend, which might give you some idea on how her intruding the base happened.

_In any military area, always look busy. Carry something. Look like you are systematically looking for something. Move about crates and peer at their contents in a meaningful way. Salute all the officers within a five-mile radius, the lower their rank, the sharper the salute. In a short, always look like you're going somewhere and wherever you're going, look like you have the right to go there._

_And always remember the LLoI, the Lovely Law of Infiltration:_

_Once you're inside, nine out of ten soldiers won't think you ought to be outside. _

_Take care, XX,_

_X._

20) The handwriting of the second entry for 18th of Fentuary grows steadily shakier up to this quotative paragraph; written as if every stroke of pen had been a slash across the paper.

While the next section begins where the previous left, it is evident from the manuscript that in real-time there was quite a halt between them. In the following paragraph her hand has returned to its default cursive spikes, the style gradually shifting towards the usual distorted matter-of-factness, the peculiar puns and alliterations slowly creeping back while grammar is once again abandoned as a bagatelle.

21) From the little information the Guardians of Armadyl would impart on the theft it is evident that Xanina's trespass hadn't only broken the gates but disarmed most of the temple's defences –traps, blessings, spells and curses- consequently paving a ready road for the next intruder.

Whether the wording here is pure self-denial or if Idria had chosen to spare her from knowing her true contribution to the theft remains unknown.

22) The Mahjarrats Hazeel, Enakhra and Zemouregal, respectively; all known collaborators of Zamorak in his overthrowing of Zaros.

23) Lord Daquarius Rennard, the commander of the Kinshra, or the Black Knights.

24) "Not in my fortress"

25) Some clarification may be due here. The TKID communication system was developed from the technomancy of the so called "slayer gems", used by the masters of the Slayer's Order to communicate with their apprentices.

The so-called comm-orbs of TKID scouts are connected to what is referred to as the "Mother-orb" at the TKID headquarters, from which messages are sent to and received from field agents. (In a similar way as the "gems" of a Slayer Master's trainees are connected to the one carried by the Master himself.)

These messages may be short audio-visual connections that enable a long-distance face-to-face conversation or, as seen before, written messages that are sent at once.

What is most obscure about this communication system is the nature of the "lines" or "channels" through which the messages are sent. Here we must return to the Lunar Network (see footnote 10) for comparison. The LN _has_ no channels, as it operates on an omnipresent _field_, the Anima Mundi, the entity which binds all living things of Gielinor together. (To put it in layman's terms. For a comprehensive definition I'd personally recommend _The soul of the planet: Anima Mundi_ by Dr. Yewgam Goingstone) Any sentient being with enough magical skill can reach towards another mind (The Lunar, rune-based contacting spell being the easiest way to do this) figuratively speaking _along this field_.

This, however, is not the case with the Slayer and TKID communication systems, both of which use a network of channels for transferring messages. Both these organisations have kept the structure of their channel-systems secret, though the former has been often suggested to be based on Elemental altars. The only facts available on their undoubtedly complex and fascinating nature are that they are

Strictly restricted to Gielinor and can not be used for interplanar communication.

That sometimes these channels cross or, causing blockings and other interference and sometimes even presenting the possibility of a message being "hijacked" from one channel system to another.

By now the reader will have most likely inferred that while Miss Alizarin could competently use all these forms of communication, her grasp on their technical nature was rather restricted.

26) Next to no information is available of this extremely long-lived, intelligent and violent race that terrorised Gielinor during the 4th Age. These reptilian creatures are believed to have arrived from another plane –possibly through the altar of Blood in the Sanguinesti region in southern Morytania as it was there that they were first encountered. Between their first emergence and final banishment, all in the first half of the 4th age, the Dragonkin left three notable imprints on Gielinor: death and destruction everywhere they went, the metal known as dragonite and lastly –the race of dragons; a weaker, less intelligent and more short-lived versions of its creators.

27) Judging by the handwriting Xanina made the list sometime in the morning and added comments at the end of the day.

28) The names refer, respectively, to Mr Harrallak Menarous, founder and proprietor of the combat training facility known as "the Warrior's Guild" in Burthorpe, Asgarnia and two of the said establishments most senior employees, misters Ghommal and Sloane, whose first names I have not been able to retrieve. The last name mentioned on the list is that of Mr Turael, one of the six Masters of the Slayer's Order

28)The Slayer's Order, the politically and religiously independent organisation devoted to ridding Gielinor of creatures hostile and dangerous to the sapient races –on whose ingenious "Gem" system so much of contemporary long-distance communication is based- functions in a very simple way. Anyone wishing to join the order has to present themselves to one of the Masters, who will evaluate their skills and accordingly deal out to them assignments of slaying certain beasts. (These may vary from vermin and pests to extremely dangerous creatures of an otherworldly origin.) once the assignment has been fulfilled the apprentice will return to his or her Master for a re-evaluation of skill and success. Successful fulfilment of assignments naturally causes the apprentice to rise in the ranks of the order and consequently to be dealt even more life-threatening tasks.

29) Before establishing the Warrior's Guild a fortress formerly belonging to the Imperial Guard, Mr Menarous earned his living and considerably more as a professional dueller. Many of the people he met outside the arena never had the time to realise this.

30) When the borders of the three Major Kingdoms of Central Gielinor were established at the beginning of the 5th age, the last "grey" areas to remain were those east of White Wolf Mountain. While no state seemed to be interested in the area of Taverleigh, a settlement of Guthixian druids for several ages, the lands south of the Trollheim mountains were for the better part of the first century disputed over between Fremmeniks who at the time were mass-migrating east (their descendants are these days mainly referred to as "barbarians") and Asgarnian settlers. The two groups eventually merged through intermarriage, and while the area came to be under the rule of the crown of Asgarnia, the local dialect and place-names retain a distinctive set of northern features.

While a militant uprising has never occurred, a patriotic and even separationist spirit has always remained among the inhabitants, who largely do not consider themselves to be Asgarnians. This sentiment was strengthened to new heights when the Kingdom fell under the direct rule of the Falador Knights, towards whom the Burghthorpians in general have never retained feelings warmer than the ones the have about the Kinshra. In the last few years the relations between the semi-autonomous princedom and the capital have been further tightened due to the question of standing down the Imperial Guard, the township's militia.

The lyrics Xanina copied out in her journal, I might add, are from the more polite end of the so-called Burthorpe rebel songs.

31) This document was published with the permission of the TKID. The following diary entry, which, one might say, adds some flesh to bones of the report, was not.

32) Slayer Master Mazchna, the only member of the demonic race ever to be accepted in the Order.

33) This is most likely a reference to the Myreque, a guerrilla faction operating in southern Morytania and known as the only open adversary to the rule of Lord Drakan.

34) Again Xanina's fondness for abbreviating names brings about the want of elucidation. The final three allies of the Crux Eqal to arrive were, in order of appearance, Cyrisus, a Kandarinian-born man of all obscure trades, who only two years after joining the Order was going to be initiated as a Slayer Master; Duradel, the head or High Master of said Order, and Hazelmere, tree whisperer, telepath, a royal advisor during the reign of King Healthorg and one of the original architects of the Grand Tree stronghold, as well as the last living person on Gielinor to speak Old Gnomish as their mothertongue.

35) I confess to having no idea why the pestilence epidemic that had forced King Lathas to declare the entire East Ardougne under quarantine is referred to here as "feigned". The only sensible explanation is a passing fancy for the internal rhyme between the two words, which would just as well fit the disturbed tone of the entire entry.

36) Those unfamiliar with the customs of the Moonclan will no doubt have misunderstood the last sentence as something even cruder than it, in fact, is.

The Moonclan, named so for the strikingly even crescent shape of the island they inhabit, broke off the Fremmenik at the beginning of the 5th Age, allegedly over a dispute over whether humans were entitled to the usage of the newly rediscovered runestones or not. As the animosity inside the tribe grew to the brink of a war, the pro-magic faction –an estimated one fifth of the population of the town of Rellekka at the time- emigrated to a further uninhabited island in the north-eastern seas and founded there a small but thriving civilisation based entirely on the usage of rune magic. (Certain historical scriptures refer to these refugees having taken "the Cavern Stone", the source of runestones with them and having hidden it somewhere on the island.)

While the omnipresent and persisting occurrence of magical power at work causes no harm for the health of a human being, either that, or something else on the island caused, from the very first generation, an alarmingly few boy-children to be born. Due to this as well as in order to avoid inbreeding it became customary that any passing outerlander men, usually sailors or pirates, would be asked to sire children for the local women. Contrary to what one might deduce from the sayings of continental Fremmenik (which do not bear printing) the Moonclan keep a careful tract of the fathers of their offspring and are honour-bound not to reveal their identities to outsiders.

As a result, it soon became common for the few men born to the Clan to leave the island upon reaching maturity, usually to be initiated as mages and runecrafters somewhere on the continent.

As one might readily deduce, this has made Lunar Isle an exceedingly popular rest stop for seafarers from all over Gielinor.

Thus, the locals gathered by the docks were by no means common harlots, but ordinary women wishing to start a family or to extend an existing one.

37) These gargoyle-like creatures, unique to the Lunar Island, while intelligent enough to craft primitive tools and weapons and to evidently co-operate and plan their actions, have never been successfully contacted and behave, by default, aggressively towards humans.

In her groundbreaking study "Suqah –the indigenous Moonlanders" Dr. Sharien Rowannock argued that while "Her initial approach was that of a zoologist, the further she observed the suqah, the more she came to view them like an anthropologist" and that their aggression towards humans is "Not a horde of beasts attacking people, but a displaced population holding their ground against invading settlers." As one might guess, the views of Dr. Rowannock are not popular among the Moonclan.

38) An islet known as "Pirates' Cove", whose sheer existence is unconfirmed, is rumoured to stand somewhere on the outskirts of the Fremennik archipelago, where it supposedly serves as a safe haven for ships sailing under the skulled flag. Further legends elaborate that its existence has been concealed by an enchantment casted by the Moonclan, who rely on the passing ships for tradeable goods and men.

39) The role of the Oneiromancer, or "Dream magician", as the conductor of spiritual rites and the guardian of the astral altar, is the closest the Moonclan have to a leader. As can be inferred from the title, the Oneiromancer supposedly draws her power from dreams, the word being used in its in broadest sense, that is, the unconsciously operating level of the mind.

40) I would advise the reader to view the following passages as nothing but a hallucination, believed to be true events by an emotionally unstable alcoholic under the influence of some unknown but doubtlessly potent intoxicant.

41) The Shareen Theatre Company denies the allegations made by Miss Alizarin and maintains that the artist formally known as Alishya is a) a woman b) most definitely not HRH Prince Ali.

This state of affairs was backed up by Mr. Osman, head of the intelligence office of the state of Al-Kharid,, who informed me that the entire claim was ridiculous and that as it could be readily confirmed, the Prince was at the time staying in Nardah, Southern Kharid, where he studied the town's collection of historical scrolls.

42) Surok Magis, (b. ca Year 70), a necromancer wizard and the former leader of the Zamorakian order of Dagon'Hai, known to have attempted the assassination of King Roald of Misthalin in the year 168, and who since lived as an outlaw in the refuge offered by various Zamorakian institutions, until –later.

43) Up until the outlawing of the Kinshra, the Royal Military Academy of Falador, generally regarded as the most prestigious institution of its kind, allowed the enrolling of the sons of known Zamorakian families -in other words, the military training of boys who would most likely become Black Knights upon reaching maturity.

Since the declaration of the Anti-Zamorakian act in the year 163, the RMA has naturally abstained from tolerating open worshippers of Zamorak in its student body. Nevertheless, as many of the old families' conversion to Saradominism was a mere formality for avoiding prosecution, the reliability of this system can only be considered questionable.

44) As a mirroring result of the same piece of legislation, the Kinshra themselves took up measures to prevent the infiltration of Falador spies by installing a compulsory probationary service for initiates from outside the old Zamorakian families.

The probation of two years is formally served as a guard, but the initiate's duties include chores such as the laundry, cooking, cleaning and repairwork as well. During this time the initiates live under constant surveillance and have practically no rights whatsoever –which is rather clearly reflected in the behaviour of the ones Xanina met during her visit to the Ice Mountain fortress.

45) When questioned about his deceased ward, Mr. Enroy was not entirely unhelpful until I mentioned the upcoming publishing of her diary, after which he refused any further cooperation and even demanded me to hand the journal over.

One of the few answers I received before his turning into solid stone was to my question on naming of his adopted daughter. Why "Xanina" –a fairy changeling left in the place of a human child and why "Alizarin" –a shade of deep crimson instead of his own surname?

i_"She wasn't my blood and would never be so I didn't give her my name. Why Xanina Alizarin? Because I didn't want to call her the red ditch-delivered bastard, that's why."/i_

46) I believe that Xanina held some sentimental attachment to Burthorpe, her birthplace, and never quite gave up the hope of finding out about her origins. This connection shines through the entire diary, her entire life –the place she was born in and found abandoned, the place she returned for assignments with the Imperial Guard, to visit the Warrior's Guild, the songs she sang when the mood was at its highest, the home she never had.

47) Having interviewed several authorities on the subject I can only concede that Xanina was trying to somehow contact her fallen brethren. Nevertheless, even to these experts the references to "portals" and the "realm of shadows" remained undecipherable.

9


	3. Editor's preface

uPreface/u

I first met Xanina Alizarin in Burthorpe, Asgarnia, sometime in the spring of 163.

We served in the same operation aiding the Imperial Guard, in one of the countless re-establishings of territory borders between them and the mountain folk.

I can't say we took on immediately, and over the course of the following weeks, - spent negotiating mountain paths too narrow for a goat, waiting for an ambush every waking moment and sleeping side to side in cramped tents- I got to know nothing of her save that she was a decent mountaineer, skilled with the sword as well as the crossbow and that she rolled a lot in her sleep.

When the operation was over I recall Xanina taking her pay in cash and immediately departing for Falador without as much as a goodbye to her brothers-in-arms.

In the next seven years I came across her in a dozen similar situations. She was always travelling, never staying at one location for more than a few months. She was always steel-nerved in battle, stoical after them and more or less drunk for the rest of the time. She was a friend and a lover to anyone who happened to be travelling the same way, leaving them behind once paths parted.

She held an NCO's rank in the Falador Knights and their Temple subsection. She was initiated as a Fremmenik, being at one time engaged to a member of the archipelago royalty. Among her patrons were the Crown of Misthalin, both of the Gnomish kings of Kandarin and later on, as her final mission, the organisation known as the Crux Eqal. I do not believe she ever felt much attachment to any of these employers.

As the reader will find, the journal entries shed little light over the circumstances of her death. The only certain facts any living man can impart is that her body was discovered near the Zamorakian chapel in the North-Western Wilderness on Septober 36, 170. She had been inadequately kitted for travelling in such dangerous lands, carrying scarcely more than her clothes, some food and a few items of jewellery. The only injury detectable on her body was a jet black bruise on her back, signalling heavy internal bleeding and likely to have been caused by a strong missile spell. Nothing had been evidently taken from her. Xanina Alizarin's remains were transported to Varrock, Misthalin and laid to rest in the Edgeville cemetery.

Her last journal was recovered by pure chance. I was browsing through "rare items" lists at the Grand Exchange market in Varrock, when a familiar name caught my eye. As I was to discover, the landlord of the inn where Xanina had stayed had put her possessions up for sale, personal items included. Having managed to momentarily overcome the shock caused by the news of her death, I immediately bought the journal to keep it out of hands even more wrong my own, as well as some other items I knew had belonged to her: a bottle-opener, a Fremmenik knife, an hourglass-shaped vial. These I brought to her grave in Edgeville and laid down by the headstone.

The diary, on the other hand, proved too dear to bury in the dark earth. Craving to preserve something of her for the generations to come, I set out to edit it for publishing.

The original text has not been tampered with in any way save for the occasional correction of punctuation to a more legible form. The various documents attached to the original diary have been integrated between the entries in accordance with their dates.

The greatest difficulty I faced in my work was the fact Xanina's journal was never intended to be read by anyone else and thus some of the references to people and places would not open up to the average reader without some additional notes. I did my best to fill in these gaps with information, acquired scrap by scrap from her friends, employers, landlords and colleagues and arranged them so as to make her portrayal as full, balanced and comprehensive as possible.

I took one liberty with the manuscript, that of dividing it into chapters. The division, while artificial, should be found justified by the reader, as it is based entirely on the changing phases in the author's life, which in turn are reflected in the writing style.

The first chapter gets its texture from alcohol. This jumble of short and ungrammatical but impishly well-worded notes sketches a portrait of a carefree vagabond with no idea about the events to come, no idea that she will be dead in sixty days.

The longest, second chapter I would title "Falador Days". As Xanina is forced to sobriety and seriousness the entries become longer and more comprehensively written. The tone and the style swing from one end of the spectre to another, and while a few darker passages cast their shadows, a certain felicity, a peace of mind, shines through the entire text.

The third chapter makes the heaviest read. These days between the end of her stay in Falador and the end of her assignment are recorded matter-of-factly, even though they speak of events incredible to the reader and horrifying for the writer, whose own demise can already glimpsed around the corner.

The final chapter; a handful of disjointed memoranda written not a week before her death, betrays no trace of the writer of the three preceding ones. A projection of an insane, tormented mind, they leave no clue of why their author died the way she did and whether this was intended or not.

Let me move back in time once more, to our initial meeting.

As told before, we had both been brought to the semi-autonomic princedom by the same cause –The Imperial Guard, usually fiercely independent of outside help, was hiring mercenaries for an upcoming operation in the Trollheim area.

One evening a few days we were due to depart , some of us –the hired fighters and a couple of IG privates- were gathered at the local inn ("The Toad and the Chicken", which still stands strong to this day) for a round of drinks. Quite a few had already been had; the mood was high and the conversation deafening.

Then a creak of a stair unsealed my ear

Turn around to a-see what is it I hear

Down the stairway from the rental rooms descended, in order of appearance; a pair of bare feet, a pair of legs, a pair of thighs ending abruptly in a crimson plateskirt. At this stage the newcomer –still mostly concealed -paused on a step to (judging by the sound) stretch and yawn. (A wildcat's mew and the creak of old, dead wood.).

Then came the rest of her: a tiny slice of bare midriff between the dragonite skirt and the hem a camisole, a pair of breasts barely concealed by the worn linen, a scarred neck and –finally- a head. Sleep-filled eyes, mass of bed-tousled hair, big, bright mouth closing from a yawn.

She stood there. We stared.

She scratched unconsciously her forearm. We stared.

"Any chance of a drink in here?" And because we still just stared she took the final steps to the bar room, walked to our table and planted herself at the end of the bench.

In a kind of reverie she picked up the mug closest to her and with a slurred "Cheers" drained my pint of matured Asgarnian in one go.

What I am trying to convey here, for my own sake as much as the reader's is the way she appeared to me, the way she ought to be remembered by the world: half-armoured-half-bare, halfshelled, disarmed by weariness, a trace of froth on her upper lip, the combination of breath-thin linen and a draughty bar room.

A woman who killed civilians in cold blood and passed out in the alleys of Varrock Southside; who looted the corpses of her fallen comrades for "something that might come in handy" and sold the findings to cover her bar tab.

My brave, strong, homeless little girl.

My Xanita, the Red Spirit Changeling.

In Varrock, Misthalin,

Ire of Phyrrys 30, 170,

D.D.


	4. Chapter 1

**ChapterI**

**Pentember 38, 170, on board on "Adventurous" ****/b**

Haven't been able to write for a while as ran out of pages weeks ago and couldn't get new book from Musa. Finally got to buy this one off a Brimhaven customs orificer -as paid outrageous overprice the nice lady didn't bother with poking around the backpack too much.

The hard bit being over, managed to get the last ticket for the evening shift of "Adventurous" which still operates the Brimhaven-Ardougne route twice a day, there and back. At the moment we're some two thirds gone and ought to dock in Ardy before midnight.

That's about it for the conditions and circumstances and an extra blessing on Lady in Blue for letting me take three bottles of KO 1) to the continent.

Anyway, got to cover for the lost week and reason why even set foot on thrice-blasted-to-the-Abyss-Karamja in the first place. Darling old Tiffy 2) hinted darling old Raddy 3) might have a profitable job for self but would probably hire the first qualified person to show up.

Hence made haste and hitchhiked on hay cart to Sarim Haste was rethar hindered by the prices charged by Mr Stanley and instead of paying myself sick opted for taking a ship to Musa and crossing Northern Karamja to Brimhaven on foot – and the rest is stated above.

Even if Rad has already dealt the job to someone else there's still a chance of another assignment and at least a place to stay the night, so nothing to lose.

**b****Probably still Pent. 38, might be first of Fent, Leggy Guild guest quarters./b**

Got the job.

Raddie said it was mine for taking and he'd give the details in morning as long as would now sod off and let him sleep.

Can't sleep, so for the benefit of upcoming generations will explain how the guild system works. Champs, Heroes and Leggies, congrats for the mastermind who named them, are basically agencies for hired muscle. People who need mercenaries, bodyguards, spies, assassins (you name it, some fuckwit hires it) make orders at the Guild for what kind of people they want for what kind of work and the Guild folks match them up with members they think suitable for the job. In turn they take a percentage of your reward, or if it's too likely you'll die on the assignment, a pre-paid commission.

As Raddy puts it, either way, it's cutting your own throat.

**b****Definitely 1****st**** of Fentember, 170, coach from Ardougne to Catherby/b**

Bugger all this.

Am going back to Karamja. With a bunch of druids.

The gospel goes as follows:

The Taverley lot apparently wants to build one of their stone circles in Southern Karamja, of all the bloody places on Gielinor, and need a guide or a guard of sorts.

And the decrepit darling fellow Rad the Bad is, he had pre-assigned the case to me, entirely forgetting that yours truly is not setting a foot ANYWHERE south of Brimhaven Isthmus EVER AGAIN. 4)

As another sign of senility he forgot to tell me just where I was supposed to be going with the headstanders until I had signed the contract.

So as can be inferred from above am now on the way to Catherby wherefrom will cross the Mount W.W. foothills to Asgarnia. Once in Taverley am supposed to get orders from someone called Ivy Sophista, who will be in charge of the show.

To compensate, it ought to be priceless seeing the balancers trying to be One With Nature in Kharazi Region.

Bugger all this.

**b5****th**** of Fent, 170, Taverley/b**

Correction to previous entry: Bugger all i_this./i_

**b6****th**** of Fent, Taverley/b**

Some clarification on the above statement may be due.

At any rate, am scribbling this in my regular hammock at Zed's place 5) which explains the handwriting. The old man seems well enough. Didn't comment on assignment at all so I guess mercenarying isn't ok even when hired just to bodyguard a bunch of mystics.

…Which isn't the case at all, bringing us to the present case.

As it turns out, the job description submitted to the Guild wasn't exactly truthful. (Which under article 5 subsection 3b would allow me to acquit assignment without penalty.)

The present case.

Met Sophista, my contact and her superior T., another flowerpicker. 6)

Just on the side, the upcoming job won't in fact involve Karamja at all so no problem with looking on the bright side of life on this one.

Present case goes as follows and if this is another sham count me out penalty or no:

-item I: The reason Rad was presented with a con story was to "Avoid getting the Guild mixed in what is about to happen and to protect the personal safety of Mr. Erkle." –direct quote from the head honcho stander.

-item II: The reason for asking a guide to Southern Karamja was knowing who'd be Raddy's first pick for the job. Anyhow, their interest had nothing to do with the Kharazi business or Shilo. As Poison Ivy so elegantly put it, the tale goes a lot longer way back.

The whole affair is about another case a few years back –a direct assignment from guy I met in pub. Simple enough job: obtain object, deliver object, get paid, sod off. No names, no receipts, my favoured type of a task at the time. Never kept my end of the deal as discovered said object was a God artefact (see Rule III) 7) and sodded off all unpaid.

Now Ms. Sophista confirmed two things had pretty much suspected, i.e. that

A: My then-patron had managed to obtain aforementioned object anyway 8)

B: That aforementioned ex-patron was and is a bloody Mahjarrat (see Rule 4) 9)

So this being the state of stated facts we've now got a former minion of ole Zammy armed with a God weapon running loose. Not v. favourable, apparently.

Back to the present and its case. Now the headstanders are a part of some organisation or other called the Crux Eqal, (basically a collaboriatitional project involving them, the WK, the Templers and henceforth yours truly, like it or love it) whose raisenditre is keeping an eye on Lucien&co.

Iddest, the present case is: Find Luci and what the bugger's up to.

Best lead at the moment is probably an explorer type by the name of Movario who might or might not be working for Luce. According to Sophista the man has studied in Varrock and the Mage's Guild and info could probably be best acquired from there.

Same date: Contacted Yanille via Lunars10) and was told they never knew nuffink about no Morvario so looks like am off to ole Avarrocka.

-item: Royal library

-item: E.S. center???

-item: the Museum?

-item: buy more KO 11)

**b7****th**** of Fent, South of Mount. Ice/b** 12)

Night.

Left Taverley this morning by the Way, the Long Road Home or Central Line, whatever you call it won't make the goddamn thing any shorter or better maintained. 13)

Passed the Burthorpe Wall around midday, reached the Ice Mountain highlands at dusk.

Am currently camped right off road, south-east of the dwarf factories.

The birds go to-weet, to-weet, the pistons go dunk-gong, dunk-gong, I go berserk if either doesn't stop soon and let me sleep.

Tweet-dunk, to-gonk, twonk-eenk, gunk-donk

To you as well, misters Robin and Rendaban.

**b10****th**** of Fentuary, 170, Blue Moon Inn, Varrock, Misthalin/b**

To be exact:

Past midnight, bed, room 3, Blue Moon Inn.

Came to town about an hour ago. Got lodgings at BM after paid previous tab. Damn decent of them, not charging interest.

Item: check institutions of higher education in the area for any sign, sighting or record of this Movario person, starting with the Palace library.

Item: check guest books at BM and JB (Possibility of private lodgings???)

**b11****th**** of Fent, Varrock/b**

Back in bed at Blue Moon, recounting the good deeds of the day.

According to guestbooks M. has been to Varrock on a regular basis, always residing at BM, staying from a week to three months at a time. His last sign-out is dated Moevyng, 15 this year, after a month's stay. The only facts the landlord would impart were that he lives a very regular life, pays his bills in cash and on time and that he apparently spends his days studying.

Library yielded more details since seven-fold-blessed Reldo allowed me to poke around the lending records. Apparently my target's interests revolve around pre-3rd Age history, Gods of all types and engineering of the kind that involves crushing, impaling, poisoning or slicing and dicing people who invade one's private property.

Lent three books from his list, R. made me pay in advance for their replacements, dunno why.

-A Comprehensive History of Deities on Gielinor, volumes 1-3 by Eldermere Narheen

-Blades, Barbs and Beetles: The Architecture and Engineering of Menaphite Tombs of the Late 2nd Age by B.S. Templeton

- The Legande of the Agapys of the Caverne, translatyde owt of Runick Conscripcioun by the Translature of Devinours of the Abbeye of Taverleigh 14)

Museum wasn't of much help til ran into Minas who said he remembered the chap by name. He had asked to have a dekko around the Senntisten site, being especially interested in the temple. Minny supervised him while underground and saw the guy take readings with some apparatus or other. He left when asked, jotting down notes as he walked to the gate and was never seen again.

The real breakthrough happened at Jolly Boar. The landlord wouldn't let me see the guestbook but nothing lost as some three quarters of the entries are aliases anyway and no one there ever seems to remember nothing about no man and the bartender can confirm they were visiting their old widowed mothers at the time. 15)

Thought it a lost cause when by providence of some unknown god came across the Fitzgerald kid; back home from Yanille to visit his old widowed father. It's called irony or something.

Back to track: Jonathon was in fact familiar with the name, remembering an older student mentioning some well-regarded honorary member of the Guild who had been expelled for co-operating with the Ourania monastery. Rumour had it he had since been employed at the Khazard base.

Bullseye, baby.

In addition, Johnnie mentioned rather casually that the guy living in the next room was a Kinshra. (How he knew this I didn't dare ask.) His neighbour had turned up a month back and seemed to spend most of his time meandering about the Wilderness border, chatting up the beacon guards or buying drinks to strangers at the bar.

Sometimes at night he could be seen sitting in the courtyard, enjoying the breeze and scanning the skies. On some of those nights, a curiously rhythmical twinkle of blue light could be seen in the north-west horizon, going on and off at long and short intervals.

Reported that one to Fally via commorb, what some bloke in the pub told me.

**b13****th**** of Fent, 170, Flying Horse, Ardougne, Kandarin/b**

Rule VII: Say no to teleportation.

Bought a one-way from Aubury to his colleague in Ardougne. So expert work all the way, no getting jammed in holes between space or landing in seven bits, but, reader, I repeat: Say no to teleportation.

However, one can not resist such a rare literary curio, the parallelism of time and place and event, but has to return to the initial link in the chain of events leading to this time, this place.

Let memory speak.

_i__Autumn of 168, Flying Horse Inn, Ardougne, Kandarin./i_

I had left the Hell under Prifiddnas a month ago. A month had gone past and still the voice whispered in my head, still the multibridged pit opened up underneath my bed every night.

The voice whispered and it knew what I had done. It repeated to me what it knew. By the time the Pit opened in front of me, it was laughing with delight.

I knew It was gone, but still It spoke to me in the Land of Dreams, where Arrav first met Zemouregal.

Sometimes it wasn't It. Sometimes it was Kardia.

She told me that as I had killed Iban, I would have to serve as his replacement. She said she knew I'd eventually return. Then she'd do to me what Zem did to Arrav.

Poetical self-pity aside, I had finished my last assignment a while ago and instantly gone on the longest reeler of my life. I stayed and drank at Flying Horse because

It was cheap

I didn't have the strength to drag myself away from the damned-by-everyone-from-Armadyl-to-Zaros-Ardougne.

Cheap or cheaper, four weeks into my settling there the major part of my repayment had gone down my throat and out the other way.

Curiously enough I remember rather clearly the night when the bartender laid another glass in front of me, sendin' regards from yonder gentleman. The said gentleman soon came limping over to my table, robed and hooded from head to toe. He watched me drink the double brandy he had paid for. When the empty glass clinked on wood, leaving another link in a chain of sticky rings, he presented his case.

He understood I sold services.

(Not one of these again.)

He was under the impression my economical situation was rather dire.

(Ohsitohshitohshit.)

He might have a mutually satisfactory agreement for me.

(Do the robes cover some horrific disfiguring disease?)

It would be nothing complicated.

(But still icky, mister.)

In a short, I would have to go to the nearby temple of a rather obscure order and retrieve a certain artefact from there.

…In that case, sir, you've got a deal.

We had a deal. And when I learnt just what it was that I was supposed to retrieve I acted in accordance to rule III.

As can be inferred, in the long run this made no difference.

One way or another am off to Khazard's base tomorrow. Bought complete set of their armour piss-cheap off Omart. Don't know where he gets them.

**bMemo for: Savant, FORWARD TO STC** 16)

**Date: 16.6.170**

**From: Pros. Alizarin**

**Subject: CE-mission**

**Target name: Movario**

**Mission: locate**

**License to kill: YES**

**Have located and searched the lodgings and laboratory of current target.**

**Have not located target.**

**Location of residence: 2,56N 1,56E Underneath Khazard Fortress**

**Location safety: RED**

**Discoveries: **

**ITEM: two (2) volumes of handwritten notes**

**ITEM: two (2) halves of unrecognised object, possibly a key**

**Presumed contact w/ GenK confirmed **

**Presumed contact w/ L confirmed **

**Notes frequently refer to Lumbridge caves ( possible location)**

**References to "Stone of Jas", "Fist of Guthix", "Eye of Saradomin", presumably the same artefact**

**Collaboration between Gen K, L and target likely **17)

**Target expert engineer, specialist in traps**

**Memo for: Pros. Alizarin **

**Date: 17.6.170**

**From: Savant**

**Subject: Reply to: CE-mission**

**TeleF asap items rep. TC** 18)

**17/6/170, bed, guest room, castle, Falador/b**

Note to self: Kill Tiff.

That being said, teled asap to F with items reported as having been found at said locations and am still in possession of all my bits and pieces. Had bit of a close shave w/ left mid finger and the desk drawer though.

Savant claimed I should and easily could have cut down the report by more than half the letters. Apparently all the written messages sent from all the commorbs come in through the same channel, one letter at a time, so the shorter the message the quicker they can have them fished out of the channel, hung up to dry and decoded.

No trouble with blocking channels here, only with being down to last bottle of KO.

I went to Movvy's house

But Movvy wasn't home

I got out of Movvy's house

And teleported home

Meaning am back in Fally and have reported all my findings in their unabridged form. Anyway, as experiences at Movario's place were of a rather traumatical persuasion and had to be teled again (courtesy of wheezer Cromperty) am rather vexed at the moment. Thaerisk told me to sleep the vexing off. Silly bugger. 19)


	5. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**b18/6/170, Falador/b**

Bed, morning.

Teddy, down to his last year of squiring by the way, came banging at my door at dawn to see if I'd be fit for a formal meeting by noon. Told him yes as sleep had mostly de-vexed me and would be right as rain and ready for action once had broken fast –hence am now writing this over a plate of eggs, crunchy bacon and toast.

Never had the time last night to realise had actually been given a room of my own instead of getting de-bunked and bunked up in the dormitories. Whether this was due to being considered important or state of heavy vexication remains unknown. Am not complaining.

Ted wouldn't or couldn't impart much on the meeting except that it would be closed doors, all classified and that I had better turn up on time, fully dressed and fully sober, this being a direct quotation from Thaerisk.

Definitely looking forward on this one.

Still 18th. Bed, night.

I'd count my blessings if I could see them for the curses.

Went to meeting today. Met people.

Arriving at the council chamber I was met by three persons –Thaerisk, who as he ever so discreetly reminded me remains my official employer; some manner of a paladin bearing TK stripes on the sleeve of his civilian's coat and a third person – a robed woman I did not recall ever having met.

Thaerry saw the guards off and bolted the double doors after them. We were seated. We were introduced. Thaerisk Cemiphier, senior druid of the Taverley congregation. .Akrisae, Temple Knight, representing both them and the WK in Crux Eqal. Xanina Alizarin, Temple Knight proselyte, White Knight Adept, the idiot who brought about this cock-uppance in the first place. And –I knew I had never met her but the pattern on her robes had looked familiar –Marshal Idria, head of the Guardians of Armadyl.

Rewind. Rewind all the way back to 168 and breaking my first contract in a month due to the violation of Rule III.

Briefed and kitted by the client, it was ridiculously easy to enter the antechambers of the temple complex a slowly decomposing underground affair consisting of scarcely more than a series of winding tunnels; the floor collapsed here and there to reveal the volcanic depths underneath. It's impossible to tell how long the journey was.

In-caving walls, dust in my lungs, the smell of sulphur and mould, I thought the place long abandoned.

A propos: Why do all the old stories have travellers coming upon uncrossable rivers?

I was a traveller, and now I had arrived at a river, a lava one, and was contemplating on how to cross it.

It was then that I met the first living being of the tunnels. A witch-woman, made of filthy hair and brown teeth, muttering to herself. The river guardian. She spoke to me first, asked my intentions. If I were here after the Staff. Yes. Would I use it myself or hand it to someone else? Someone else. Did I know what it even was? No. Well, she'd help me across if I paid her with a name, told her who sent me.

I told her.

In exchange for that knowledge I could now either be taken across the river, or be told what it was that I was after. I knew I could find another way around the stream. I chose the knowledge. I received it. Then I ran like hell.

Back in the present I was seated across another woman wearing similar but considerably cleaner robes. Idria, head of the Guardians of Armadyl.

_i"What yer after is of the gods. The one you serves is one of them what is frae Frenesk. Do ye know what happened last time one of 'em got 'old of that is of the gods? Do you? DO YOU!"/i _20)

Introductions being over, the meeting was opened and the pieces were finally fitted together. After my runner Winelda, the river-witch, had informed the Guardians that Lucien "was after the Staff but wid nae come to gedit 'isself."

A year later the temple had been invaded by another mercenary, his way eased by the fact that my initial trespassing had broken some blessing or spell protecting the main gates. 21) The man had forced his way to the back chambers, sending missile spells in every direction, collapsing the ceiling to crush a dozen of the Guardians –and taken the Staff.

The thief had given Winelda the same answers and the same name as the previous one. This one had just chosen to be taken across the river in exchange.

The identity of the man was never discovered but it was evident he had fulfilled his contract. Lucien had the Staff of Armadyl.

Not long after the robbery Idria had contacted Taverley to inform them of the new threat to balance. With no military power of their own, they had chosen to unite themselves with the Falador knights who readily conceded to fight against an ally of Zamorak's. At the first of these trilateral meetings of what had been termed the "Crux Eqal" Sir Amik, then more closely involved in the cause, had brought up the subject of a recently initiated knight, who closely resembled the description the river-witch had given of the first intruder.

Anyhow, after the buggers decided to combine forces quite a lot of productive intelligence has been acquired, compared and put together to form the one big picture of our mutual friend.

Item: Lucien has the Staff of Armadyl; he knows how to use it and has regenerated to former power and way above. It is likely he's attempting to ascend to godhood the way his former master did.

(Just aside: The meeting was no-minutes, no recordings, classified to the rafters but a girl's got to make notes as head can't store all this info on the account of having to hold together all this hair.)

Item: Luci's allies include at least Khazard. Relation to other Mahjarrat (Hazy, Ennie, 'Regal) 22) of the pro-Zammy league unknown. V. likely will have connections to Zamorakian organisations ie Dagon'Hai, the ZMI, possibly the Kinshra (except last time I checked Darrie 23) pretty much had a NIMF 24) attitude to necromancer overlords.)

Item: L. has established a spy network covering at least Central Gielinor -this information being courtesy of TKID who have some frightful shithouse of a technomantic gadget that traces any long-distance communication spells that hop across their channels. Apparently there is quite a lot of evidence of a steady stream of messages towards somewhere in the North-West Wilderness, originating from locations from Ardougne to Phasmatys. They managed to trace back a few of these spells and have been able to pinpoint the places they were sent from. According to Savvy it might even be possible to identify the senders if a tight enough surveillance something was established over some area with a margin of error a mile wide. 25)

Item: Have had a better dekko at Movario's notes and so has everyone else. Most of it seems to revolve around something called "the Stone of Jas" ( apparently an item he is tracking on the behalf of Lucien) and the Dragonkin. 26) On the side there's continuing reference to some "strange readings", in places like the Hollows, Lunar Isle, Dorgesh-Kaan and the Senntisten site (in accordance w/ what Minas said about him poking around??? What readings?)

Item: Movvy doesn't like working for Luci.

While I was off the CE sent an invitation to join in to some folks of the Warrior's Guild and the Slayer's Order. As a side note Thaerry asked me to contact any other useful people I might know. So am off to browse through address book for reliable folks who don't mind getting killed.

**b19/6/170/b**

Same night, same place.

Lunarred through some fifty names, Leggie's folks being out of question and out of the rest most won't respond, some are probably dead and the rest break the contact as soon as Luci's name is mentioned.

One is coming, though. One is definitely coming.

Am off to get some bloody sleep.

Same date, day.

Another one's coming as well. Hazelmere. I was some three quarters along the way to sleep when the little bugger came poking around in my mind (I don't know if he knows Lunar Magic or what), explaining that he had felt my mind sweeping over the world all day long and asked if there was anything he could do for me. So explained to him the situation and got told to count him in.

Had to contact him again this morning just to make sure I hadn't dreamed the whole thing. Hazie said I might have indeed, but unless the bit about Lucien was imaginary then I could still count him in.

Can't wait to see the old sod again.

Anyway, as Zed used to say, 98 percent of warfare consists of hanging around to see what happens next. Looks like I spent my two percent at Movvy's as there's buggerall to do in here. But as he also used to say: Never you mind that just as long as they pay you for the hanging hours as well.

Apart from the aforementioned new recruits there's no news from any front. The TKID isn't any closer to pinpointing people (their error margins being still wide enough to contain the entire Varrock Southside) and apparently no weird messages have been swimming in their channels.

No-one else seems to have nothing to do either so am free to consider today as spare time.

To Do: 27)

Badger Vyvin about new boots.

Went through the whole what-happened-to-the-ones-I-gave-you-two-months-ago shebang before paying punitive price for a new pair. Jolly good I didn't mention the previous having winded up in a pawn shop in Varrock. Poor Vyvy would probably have a heart attack if he knew that someone else than a qualified, sworn-in White Knight might be sullying his hoard.

Have bath.

Did so. After about three hours some imbecile came banging at the door yammering about there being other people needing a goddamn wash in here. Told him I could bloody well smell that and in his case I'd recommend the sheep-dip. Got left alone after that one.

3) Have haircut

Didn't.

4) Don't get drunk.

Did anyways. After i_that/i _had bath and badgered Vyvie.

Things that weren't on list but did anyway:

Reread Movvy's diaries in bath. It's kinda hard to sympathise with a guy whose bedstead nearly sliced your arm off but I can't get rid of the hunch that when the shit hits the gnomecopter he's not gonna stick with Luci.

Asked Thaerry about this stone of Jay thingummywut which Movy Dick is after. Couldn't get a straight, bi or totally bent answer out of the guy.

Total for today:

Units of KO consumed: 2 (ie. 1 pint), Fighters recruited for CE: 1, Hours spent in bath: 5, pairs of boots purchased: 1, time spent being jittery about seeing C. again: all lieulong day. V. Good.

**b20/6/170/b**

Falador, night.

Some upturnances for the books indeed.

First batch of allies arrived today. Harallak, Ghommy and Sloanie 28) from Warrior's came the same way with Turael…and they brought a present. A spy. A goddamn genuine intelligence officer of Lucien's, complete with an emerald pendant used for communication, this having been promptly delivered to TKID for further study.

(Savant was naturally like a kid in a candy shop about the amulet but sorta let down what with someone else having caught one first. Now that their error margins were down to the width of the mere River Lum. Poor wee lassie.)

As it turned out, the four of them had been camped a few miles north from Falador, somewhere along the Road Home, when a man had walked up to them, all bona fide and asking to share their fire. Having been allowed to do so he thanked them abundantly, passed a bottle around and struck up conversation, completely run of-of-the-mill material. Presenting himself as an armourer's apprentice from Varrock on his way to Falador to buy some materials, he made casual enquiries about their intentions, not pressing on when getting indistinct answers.

All went easy as sin up to the point when at night (the stranger had naturally offered to take the first watch) one of Turael's apprentices had called him up for another assignment. 28) There had been some disturbance on the line, the kind you get with too many gems being used in a too small area. Knowing that none of the WG guys were active in the Slayer's Order Tury had casually asked the guy who his master was. The poor bastard had nearly died of shock and stammered about having no master, what in Saradomin's name was he talking about.

Busted.

Inference for beginners, example 1: If you are an apprentice (of, say, an armourer) you have a master. If you carry a slayer gem, you are in the Order, ergo, you have a master. Hence we could deduce that what we had in here was one dodgy little son of a bitch.

Turael had still remained cool, clarifying himself by asking who he worked for.

By this time the rest of the bunch were awake as well and as the guy wouldn't answer the question Ghommal (who's always had a behead first, ask questions later-attitude to the shadier types, probably on the account of his job) hoisted the sod up by his hair, as a result of which a tiny, jewelled pendant had slipped out of the neck of his shirt. They all recognised the symbol on it.

The story goes; they managed to tackle the guy (four on one, big surprise there) and war being war, broke his legs so he couldn't run. The following morning they had gone on their merry way to Falador City, the diamond of Asgarnia, with the poor bugger tied up and slung over Ghommy's shoulder.

For the time being there's nothing to do save for waiting if Savvy can work anything out of that blasted pendant, let our new friend marinate for a spell in his cell and engage in some warm reminiscence of the good times with some old friends.

**b21/6/170, same place as always/b**

Reminiscence…yeah.

Started out at the castle by swapping stories about smuggling KO over a bottle of said substance. (For some reason no-one came complaining about illegally imported goods.) The regular routes of Musa to Sarim via banana crates and Brimmy to Ardougne in water barrels (They're s'posed to slosh, innit, ma'm?) were familiar to everyone.

Harrallak had once been mistaken for a member of the Trader crew on the account of his attire and having never bothered to correct the mistake (the blue demons consider TF folks saints by default)

had –"Do excuse me miss, I need to get some supplies" –bought the entire stock of the Dead Man's Chest and carried the crates on board with a smile and a polite nod to the customs lady.

Ghommy took the undisputed cake by recounting the occasion when he had, at Musa, -still kitted up from a nice little stroll in the Kharazi region- walked up to the customs bloke and announced he had a bottle of Karamjan Rum up his arse and that it was the man's duty to perform a cavity search on him. Drawing a picture here; a seven-foot man with the shoulder-span of a barn door, the parts of him not covered by some seriously dented plate armour being covered in tribal tattoos and the parts not covered in tattoos being covered in scars –demanding to have a CO stick his fingers up his arse. As one might readily anticipate, the poor sod got kinda out of his depth. Well, Ghommy had pressed on, he was going to export some illegal goods here and why wasn't the man doing anything about it? When he turned around and began to bend over to demonstrate the state of affairs the blue bastard started to scream at him to get on board for Saradomin's sake you sick ---sick---you!

Ghommal had stoically complied and once aboard, called at the man that he was going to make a formal complaint at Rimmington about an officer refusing to perform his duties and as a matter of fact, appealing on Saradomin offended his religious beliefs.

The guy had stood and stared as Tobias' ship sailed away -with a six-gallon barrel of KO in Ghommy's backpack which no-one had ever, for some reason, bothered to check.

By the time our sadly not six-gallon store was gone and had to proceed to the Rising Sun. They usually consider themselves a pretty snooty place what with washing the glasses after each user and no spitting on the floor –well, last night they had less White Knights and more common drinkers around which naturally lowered the standards a tad. Stood a round for everyone and then retreated to a table of our own.

Now, by some chance no-one ever seems to pick up a fight with Sloanie or Ghommy and Turael just looks so plain inoffensive. Nice fellow.

Then again there seems to be some special breed of low-brows who get some manner of an allergic reaction from the mere sight of Harrallak. Dunno if it's the tailor-made suit, the height-of-the-fashion haircut or the fact that Kaylee dug out a bottle of brandy from a cache under the counter just for him. Anyhow it soon became clear that there was at least one of the aforementioned demiogres present…and when they get the allergic reaction, they've always got to scratch that itch.

Drawing more pictures for you…Harrallak, as dandy as they get in his bespoke coat and feathered broad-brimmer, lounging in his chair, ankle over a knee, sipping his under-the-counter brandy.

Apparently this picture got one of the second cousins of cave slime so worked up he felt it necessary to express his feelings by marching up to our table and declaring that he would bloody well kick the everliving shit out of this little faggot right here and now.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

Anyhow, Harrallak (Why can't I make a goddamn shortening of the guy's name?) just sat there, all polite interest in this outburst of indignation and courteously enquired why this man wasn't proceeding in his intentions. As an answer he was told to get up from his ponce's arse so that it could be given a kicking. At this point Harrallak (Harry? Rallak?) slowly stood up and taking great care, removed two rapiers 29) from their sheaths, placed them on the table and told the man he was, indeed, ready to fight. (Neither had been removed from the premises probably because Kay, Mily and Tina all recognise entertainment when they see it.) He stood there, hands in pockets, smiled…and winked.

A reflex was triggered in the proto-ogre's brain and he swung; a Bar-fighter's Primer right upper cut which flew a strategic half an inch over Rally's shoulder. The following manoeuvre involved an elbow and in order of contact, the ogreman's solar plexus, throat and nose. For a misericorde Ral settled for kicking the man's leg from underneath him, causing a rather impressive splat when 300 pounds of beer-marinated meat hit the floor. Touché.

After that we drank in peace.

After that we drank in peace, even when Turael lead us in singing a medley of Burthorpe separationist songs, loud enough to be heard over at the castle. Might be the first and last time that "Where were you men in white", "Long black claws", or "I'll bow for no knight" are publicly crooned in Falador with nobody getting arrested. 30)

Reminiscence. Today? Nothing new. Been spending all day in bed curing hangover.

iWhere were you men in white that mornin'

I stood guard o'er our homes

Where were you men in white that day

The mountain folk struck down our boys

Where were you men in white that evenin'

We fought back, fought one and all

Where were you men in white that night

The IG drove away our foes/i

**b****Temple Knights Intelligence Department**

**Memo for: CE**

**Date: 23.6.170.**

**Subject: Interrogation report, prisoner 84**

**Present in session: Sir Cashien, Sir Varze; TKPros, WKA Alizarin; TK, WKM Akrisae**

**Duration of session: 5h**

**Session no. 1**

**Interrogated: Undercover operative in service of Mahjarrat Lucien**

**Information imparted by interrogated:**

**-Has been in employment of Mahjarrat Lucien since Rintra 169 as field agent.**

**-Assignment since been to monitor area between Falador and West Gate.**

**-Reports delivered and orders received via "pendants" (Under investigation, likely based on Slayer gems)**

**-States not having met L CONFIRMED highest known superior referred to as "Mage Squall"**

**-Mage Squall: sorcerer, "high up the chain of command" UNCONFIRMABLE, likely to reside at Kinshra Fortress **

**-States never to have spoken w/ M.S. UNCONFIRMED**

**-Delivered a physical description of M.S. UNCONFIRMED**

**-States did not contact w/ superiors between uncovering and being captured. UNCONFIRMED**

**Measures to follow:**

**-Interrogated to remain imprisoned**

**-A field agent sent to monitor KF 24.6.170 31**

**Signed: [NAME WITHHELD]**

**23/6/170/b**

Attended interrogation today.

Watched for five hours as information was extracted from the guy caught at the Way.

Sorta took part.

Akrisae came to fetch me from my quarters in the morning. He reasoned I ought to be present at the questioning as I was as closely involved in the operation. Before we left for the cells he had me take off all my WK insignia and told me to take a weapon. Any weapon, just in case.

He was quiet on our way to the prison tower and did not acknowledge any guards we met. Upon arriving to the cells he flashed his badge to the door-keeper, who let us pass without a comment. The bolts slid back behind us, almost without a sound.

I followed Akrisae down a corridor lined with cells, all of them empty. Our steps on the stone floor echoed and faded, dust rose and settled in our wake. When we reached a narrow set of steps at the very end of the hall, he spoke for the first time, gesturing down. "Stay by the door. Do not speak at all. Do not acknowledge the people in the gallery." With this briefing he fished a key out of his coat pocket, shoved it into the lock and turned.

The interrogation cell was a high, windowless room, barely lit by the single safety lantern above the door. My eyes were automatically drawn up the opposite wall, where visible to us, but hidden from anyone standing by said wall, was indeed a shadowed gallery, where I could make out the figures of Amik, Tiffy and a young Temple Knight record-keeper.

As instructed, I dropped my eyes and in silence, took my place.

Akrisae seemed to be taking his timebolting the door. When finally done, he reached over it, and turned up the wick of the lantern.

For a moment my eyes hurt from the amplified light. Then they adapted.

The stone walls surrounding us held several tool racks and a couple of firmly fixed iron rings. Save for those the room had no other furnishings besides the contraption attached to the wall below the gallery.

The device consisted of a pair of vertical railings embedded in the stone, approximately three feet apart. Between these was fixed a horizontal steel rod with a handcuff at each end, this apparently being moved up or down the railings by the means of two chains connected to the rod at one end and to a winch at the other. Attached to the cuffs by his wrists was a man. Mid-twenties, mid-height, nondescript face, sandy hair. Three days' stubble and two neatly splinted legs. At the moment the height of the rod was adjusted so that the man's weight rested on the ground but his hands, limp at the wrists, were raised way above his head. Despite the flood of light he was unconscious.

He remained so until Akrisae released the lock on the winch, causing the bar to fall. The rattle of chain didn't quite drown the startled cry. For a good moment the man was disorientated. Then, with a flinch, he seemed to become fully awake, drawing himself together and pressing his mouth shut. The I don't-know-what-you're-talking-about-phase seemed to be long over on this one.

Akrisae paid no attention whatsoever to his prisoner, seemingly immersed in the mechanics of the winch. After a moment's contemplation he seemed to reach a decision. He grasped the handle and with no apparent effort, began winding. The bar travelled up the railings, fully straightening the man's arms, then gradually rising, moving his weight from the floor to his bound wrists, rising until the heels of his feet barely touched the ground.

I stood there, at my place by the door, saying nothing, not acknowledging the people in the gallery or the two in front of me. The prisoner was definitely acknowledging me. He was taking in the scene as it appeared: a stonewalled cell, racks filled with hammers, tongs, ice spikes, knives…and lounging against the wall by the door an expressionless woman clad in black dragonhide, a bare dagger stuck in her belt. No knights -just two thugs, business as usual.

The clang of the winch being re-locked bought us both out of the trance. Akrisae, finally satisfied with the apparatus stepped in front of the prisoner, standing between his legs.

Then he kicked the man in the stomach.

"Where is Lucien?"

Form between the retches came what one could only expect-"I don't know."

Akrisae kicked the man again, harder. "Where is Lucien?"

This time the kick had caused the bound man to throw up for good measure. Vomit trickling down his chin-"I don't know."

"That's what I thought. But you see"-here his voice softened-"I know that from other sources. Ones I rely on. I'm not believing a word that comes out of that mouth of yours. I don't have a single reason to. Whereas, in the case of some questions only you can answer…you have ten good reasons to tell the truth. You want me to tell them?"

I knew what was coming. I saw him grasp the little finger of the man's right hand. I stayed by the door and didn't say a word. A swift twist of hand broke the middle joint in the finger. The scream, loud enough to be heard in the courtyard was never loud enough to drown the tiny snap of cracking bone. "I don't know, never met him, I've never seen him …" the words ended in a howl. "We're down to nine good reasons now." Another finger was seized. "I never met him, I report to folks lower down the line, I never met him-" Another scream, another crack. "Who do you report to?" Middle finger in a pincer hold. "Squall…Squall, mage." Akrisae was hesitating now, his thumb running small, soothing circles on the knuckles of the mangled hand. "Squall, dunno his real name, a mage, we all report to him…" Not enough. Crack, scream. Down to seven. "He's -, he's in contact with Lucien himself, he's in direct contact with Lucien, he's high up in the command but I don't know what of those above him, we just report to Squall-"

"Tell me about him. You've still got a finger and a thumb there, see? So tell me about this Squall." Hesitation; retches, sobs, tears down the cheeks and vomit down the chin. "I've only seen him once –Akrisae's hand found the index finger, and the burst came out: "I've only seen him once, I'd just been recruited, in the spring two years back, he's, he's –he stays at the Kinshra fortress in the mountains, I've never been inside there but he lives there, I didn't speak to him, face-to…face but I saw him then once." "Describe him." Another pause. "A man, human, male, he goes masked and hooded, I, I don't, so I don't know about his face, he goes robed and masked, I don't know more…"

Akrisae let go of the man's hand. He watched him curiously for a moment, expecting more, and not getting any, turned away and walked to the tool rack. I stood still. I said nothing. And I didn't know which I feared most: the man looking me in the eye, the man speaking to me or seeing what Akrisae would do next. Then he was back in front of the man, holding a pair of tongs. His weapon of choice. "Well now go through the first three reasons again…why I don't believe you're telling the truth. The whole truth and nothing but it..." He selected a finger, the little one again, and placed the first joint between the pliers' edges. "I want as detailed a description of this Squall person as possible. Everything you know. Everything you remember. Nothing that you've made up."

"He's, he's –he's about six foot tall" Akrisae, smiling vacantly, head cocked to the side, tightened his hold on the tong handles, ever so slightly. "He's six foot tall, medium build, walks…he walks a bit hunched and his voice, it sounds old, like raspy, very low so I gather he's pretty old must be past sixty at least…he limps a bit but his reflexes look real quick …he goes masked so I can't tell 'bout his face but its one of those metallic full-face things an, and he wears robes, pretty expensive by the look of em,, that's, that's all I know. That's what I know."

"Thank you."

A snap, a crack, a howl.

"That's for being a filthy spy."

Another crack, another howl.

"That's for being a goddamn traitor."

Third crack, third howl.

"And that's for being a fucking disgrace to the species, filthy little piece of shit."

Three fingers, cut off clean at the first joint, ricocheted around the floor like toenail clippings. Three bleeding stumps on the hand. One sobbing, hiccupping, defenceless man. One solemn Temple Knight, holding a pair of bloodied tongs, used for bending wire. One expressionless woman in black dragonleather, a knife stuck in her belt, watching the scene.

"Now…let's move on to our next question."

**b24/6/170, Falador as always/b**

Night.

Stuff keeps turning up for the books faster than I can write it down. Savant is totally over not getting to catch anyone now that she has the pendant to play with. Basically (cutting down three quarters of her lecture here) they're based on Slayer gems, even more crudely than the commorb system. They've just been re-enchanted to fit into another network and now, ladies and gentlemen, the TKID has a complete access to this network and they can practically draw its channels on the map. Savvy's already moved on to devising a way of either sending messages of our own into the system or getting it all blocked up. How cool's that?

On yet another front, Mazchy 32) turned up today. There was some initial trouble with the town guards (Who are all kinda speciesist when it comes to elder demons) til he flashed them his Slayer Master's insignia (Including but not being limited to a three-foot sabre) after which they didn't even bother with checking his papers. Handy.

Asked Maz about the situation on the wrong side of Salve.

One thing is undisputable: the shit is gonna hit it down there pretty soon. The amount of refugees crossing over to Misthalin side is already reducing the total of blood tithes and while some of the mercenaries they get in exchange pay theirs (all of it at once), they don't half make up for the reducing population. And as opposed to the locals they've got this filthy habit of fighting back. Not integrating into the society properly, by any means.

No news is good news from Burgh de Rott and Meyerditch.

May those hopeless, underfed, anaemic poor bastards prevail.

After all, I'm one of them. 33)

**b25/6/170/b**

Night.

He's here.

They're all here.

They came today, all of them the same way. Cyri and Duradel had been down in the Feldip area looking for new and exciting things to disembowel and had picked up Hazelmere on their way out. Haze 34) had cashed in a few favours from King Bolren, managing to get glider rides for all three of them.

So that's us. The WG trio, Tury, Dury, Cyri, Hazy, Mazy and self. Chaeldar can't leave Zanaris on the account of the situation there, nobody was able to contact Vannaka and as long as it ain't known what the hell Sumona is she's being counted out by default.

Loved seeing Hazy again. The old bugger keeps just getting smaller and wrinklier. Seemed to have a time with gabbling at the gate guards in Old Gnomish for a while before switching to telepathic.

As it had turned out there was nothing worth killing in Feldip Hills D. and C. had spent most of their time soaking in the famous health-improving springs of Oo'glog. That's a slayer's life for you.

Haven't seen Cyri since. Since rewind, rewind, I didn't even keep a diary at the time, I don't even have any of it written down anywhere. When was it anyways? After the Temple episode. After I ran like hell and emerged overground somewhere near Seer's Village, overnighting there at the Forester's Arms and I knew I had to get the hell out of Kandarin and its quadraply-blasted-to-the-Abyss-and-out-the-other-way God Weapons and dead men whispering in underground tunnels and treacherously cheap whiskey and feigned plagues. 35)

I slept at the Forester's Arms and in the arms of a forester as well on the account of being broke but it was ok as I hate Ardougne City 'cause it's plague-ridden and it's damp and that's why I had to be a tramp.

Anyway. I wanted to get the hell out of the entire kingdom and what with the forester having had the decency to forget some money on the bedside table I set out for Rellekka as a free spirit.

Once I reached the town I realised I still didn't have enough distance between myself and the Twin City. I boarded a ship bound for Lunar Isle, a ship full of the smell of tarred wood and the beating of the waves against the hull drowning the whispering voices.

At the dusk of the third day we docked at Port Sirsalis. Everything was the way I remembered, the steep, craggy cliffs and the weather-beaten trees that carry tiny, tart apples twice a year; the wooden town fortifications, built more against the wind than any invader; the traditional Moonclan welcome committee of flax-haired girls loitering around the docks, smiling innocently to themselves or openly eyeing the men who were fastening the ropes to the pollards with a haste that indicated that they couldn't wait to be properly welcomed either. 36)

I passed this jolly interesting anthropologic phenomenon as inconspicuously as I could, nodding a silent greeting to a few old friends and headed along the rocky path to the town gates, for my sanctuary.

I spent a blessedly uneventful few days in Sirsalis, bed and full board gratis with no whispers or chasms, soulless men in cages or omniscient witches in filthy rags. This went on until the morning Baba asked a favour of me –to go and check about the essence mines of the island where an outerlander visitor studying the local magics had left for a day before my arrival. He ought to have been back by now and even with knowing how the scholarly types might just forget the entire outside world when confronted by an exceedingly interesting specimen it was better that I check up on the man, just to see that he was alive, had some provisions on him and wasn't forgetting to eat, sleep and shave.

I recall seeing a horde of suqah 37) gathered about the rocks near the mine entrance, as if waiting. I walked slow, maintained eye contact, kept my hands in sight, all until I was way down the ladder to the caves.

I recall the serenity that always persists in the mine, the cool, smooth stone of the cave walls, the way the sounds of the outside world fade save for the distant rush of waves, the white stone reflecting and amplifying the tiniest amount of light. And at that moment my lantern was amplified to reveal a corpse. A goddamn corpse in my sacred mine. Upon further investigation of who had had the nerve to die in there I received the answer: no-one.

While the off-white of the man's face and the interesting angle his knee was bent at did a pretty good impression of having gone to meet his maker, the superficial but nevertheless audible breathing rather spoiled it.

I recall contemplating between giving the guy either a kick in the ribs or the kiss of life, and eventually settling for the age-old method of shaking him firmly by his shoulder. Didn't turn out to be a good idea. With a startled yelp he spun over to his back with the speed of a revolving blade in a Menaphite tomb -It was impressing; the way he turned around forty-five degrees without the leg moving at all. And if the ashen side of his face had looked pretty bad, the other half was even spookier. It could be best described as one big bruise, the eye swollen shut and both lips split at the corner. The combination was rather disturbing.

"Wrghr." The open eye locked on mine. "Wrghr." It's one those strange dialect expressions one learns on battlefields, usually from the mouths of men in a similar condition. And as anyone acquainted with it knows, you oblige upon hearing it unless the speaker wears a different uniform.

Neither of us wore any uniform, so I supported his head and poured down his throat all the water he could gulp.

He stayed for a while like that, both eyes closed, matted hair stuck to the bicoloured forehead.

"You're not from here." His good eye was open again.

"Bang to the rights, mate. How did you guess?"

"It's the not floating in air that gives you away."

As the bloke showed no sign of kicking it then and there, I considered myself competent enough to deal with the situation and proceeded to diagnose his injuries. "What the hell happened to you?"

The suqah. They had happened to him when he was leaving the mine. He had escaped back down the ladder…and a step had given way. He had crawled away from the entrance, vaguely aware that he wouldn't be able to on one leg. It had been some time since.

Got broken bones? Spine and skull okay?"

He regarded me as slowly as a man with one functioning eye can. "I take it that you're not a healer?"

I told him that if he'd rather wait for a qualified healer to show up I could bugger off any time he liked. Any broken bones?

Ribs. Right-hand side, more than one. Head was fine.

As the sentences came coughing out, I took the time to investigate the mangled leg. The knee was dislocated, there was probably some tendon or other torn there and this sod would be up and walking just as soon as soon as icyenes would fly out of his arse. (The last is a quotation from Cyri allegedly quoting me.) I'd patch him up here for the time being, then we'd get back to Sirsalis and they'd patch him up for good.

I recall letting him rest his freshly relocated leg in my lap. I recall sitting by him, down in the dark, underneath the world, chatting him up to keep him awake. Not much else.

Turned out he was on the Legend's lists as well, classified as "specialises in intelligence" My own classification, as far as I knew from sullying through Rad's paperwork when he wasn't looking was "Specialises in combat" and scribbled in the margin "& dirty work".

We had both been to Zanaris and Dorgesh-Kaan. We both knew about tree whispering.

We had both been accepted to the Guild for Runic Magicks of Yanille, only that he had actually taken the time to study in the place. It was there he had first learnt about the Moonclan and its unique branch of magic, based on a type of runes encountered nowhere else on Gielinor. He had taken some major pains to get to the island, getting himself hired as a navigator on a disreputable ship in Phasmatys and bought a ride to Lunar Island once they docked at the Cove. 38)

He had been told how to handle the suqah but when a few of them had made some false starts at him…he had panicked. They smell fear from yards away. And they hate that stink. The rest was the present with him laid on my cape and me sitting next to him, devising a makeshift splint for his leg. Down in the dark, underneath the world.

He slept the night while I kept watch, for something, for anything. In the morning his leg was steady enough to let him climb the ladder. On the way back to Sirsalis the suqah never bothered us.

A few days passed with Cyrisus recovering, ships docking and departing and the population growth kept steady in between. There were no voices, no whispers, no Mahjarrat or weapons left behind by gods. Just the sound of wave against rock and wind in the trees and stories unfolding from a bruised mouth.

It was during one of those conversations that he first brought up the subject of battle. He was a decent swordsman, not to mention being entirely competent in the usage of offensive spells, but had never learnt to keep himself together when faced with mortal danger, hurting and killing, being hurt or killed. It was something he had discussed with the Oneiromancer 39) even before the incident at the mines and was now bent on fixing. She had offered him a possible solution: going to his own Land of Dreams to find and face his fears. She had suggested that he take a guide or a bodyguard with him. He asked if I'd be up for the job. If I'd see him to his nightmares.

Yes. I would.

40) Three days later we stood by the flaming brazier in the longhall, arms twined and fingers interlinked around an hourglass vial. Breathing in smoke and incense, we took turns sipping from the vial. For a second I tasted bitter, burning worts, scalding my throat and melting my veins –then we were gone.

What to tell of the Land of Dreaming? That his was, like mine, made of light and shade forming shifting shapes from a material that resembles mist as much as dust, constantly forming and re-forming from abstract lumps to his yesterday's lunch -only to melt into a stalagmite that became the face of a dead childhood friend. There is no time in the Realm of Dreams but sooner or later (put thus for comprehensive means) we reached his fears or his fears reached us.

They emerged out of the mind-matter, monstrous and illusive in their changing forms –the worst he could imagine. Now, take it from me: there is no running from the demons in your head, the ones sitting on your shoulder, lurking underneath your bed. There's no place to run nor any place to hide, your options number two: fight or die.

He chose to fight. The thing kept coming back each time it was slain yet weakened and reduced –until finally finished with a stomp of a boot–and it was never heard of again.

The remains of his fear faded the very second it died. Around us the plain of Dream, swept flat by aggression and concentration, began to sprout forms again –and one of them was me. Suddenly his head was too small for the both of us.

I woke up lying on the longhall floor, mouth still tasting of bitter herbs. Cyri was passed out by my side, slack-jawed and flushed. We were still holding hands. "Wrghr."

"Welcome back." The voice from above was identified as belonging to the Oneiromancer by my slowly restarting brain. "I take it you succeeded in your quest." "Uh-huh. Wrghr, pls."

"Certainly."

The following minutes were spent in ridiculously awkward silence. We sat there, drinking the offered water and most probably both wondering which one was supposed to leave first. At last the ill ease was broken by a loud cackle. "Would yer two like any breakfast then? If yer does yer 'af ter get up because I's not serving it in bed."

Blast it all to the Abyss, out the other way and send it to Freneskae with a one-way ticket. Standing or in fact floating at the doorway was Meteora, a herbalist of an obscure branch and the proud mother of fourteen children, each with a respective father. (Five of them had been pirate captains, five had been knights of various colours, three were paladins and one was some manner of a travelling mercenary who these days resided in Draynor.) In a short, that kind of a woman who recognised our embarrassment from a mile away and found it hilarious.

Without a single glance at each other we accepted the invitation anyway and followed her home for bread and tea and apple-tarts. Having finished the breakfast - which in fact had turned out to be a supper- she brought to the table a bottle of brandy, a handful of astral runes and a stone mortar. "Yer both looks like yer needs some relieving of yer tension." Still cackling, she poured three ample glasses of brandy and proceeded to grind three runestones into fine, sparkling powder. She handed us our glasses and carefully poured some of the dust on the sides of our free hands. "This ought ter ease yer awright. What yer does is this: ye drinks yer medicine at one and ye snorts up the stardust to wash it down. Yer good 'ealth." And Cyri and I couldn't but mimic her as she downed her brandy in one go and snorted up the powdered stone.

_i"Welcome to the Moonclan, kiddies!"/i_

That is my last undisputed memory. From then on, we haven't been able to quite agree which bits happened –having a drink with Guthix at Blurberry's, going on a guided tour of Freneskae or discovering the altar where Soul runes are crafted. The next solid fact was that we were lying on the beach sometime next morning, both in some state of undress and neither with a bloody idea how the last ten hours had passed.

Cyri left a few weeks after that to join the Slayer's Order while I stayed behind, wonder lingering in my head, until I received an offer about a job in Varrock.

Anyhow, as there's no further orders from the CE at the moment, the lot of us are going out tonight. Apparently some travelling variety show has rented the Party Room.

**b26/6/170/b**

There was a show. A jolly good one.

They had two barbarian girls who threw knives at each other. They had a Fremmenik strongman. They had a mage who turned his three lovely assistants to gold and back. For the main event they had –"Ladies and gentlemen! Let me present you an artist, a sensation, a messenger of rapture! My audience, the gem of the desert, the dark rose of Kharid…the lovely Alishya!"

The rattle of pulleys was scarcely audible as the lanterns were pointed to illuminate the centre of the stage. In that bright spot stood, with her back to the audience, a tall, lean figure draped in a length of lilac veil.

The gauze dropped. It revealed a mass of flax-coloured waves that couldn't possibly be her own, and a lean brown body in a Kharidian dancing-girl's costume. For a second the entire hall held its breath. Then a voice broke the silence.

i The Misthalinians are glad to die for love/i

With the final ijewels/i she spun around, skirt a-bellow and whiskey-rasped alto finding new strength as the orchestra joined in.

She was very, very, beautiful. She had high cheekbones, smooth olive skin and carefully kohled liquid-brown eyes that contrasted fantastically with her fair hair. She was also extremely, extremely familiar.

No. No way. Slightly more covering top than you'd expect –check. A length of veil covering the neck –check. The hands, the face, i_that face_…/iat that point I had to run out past the WK bouncer. I sat on the fountain steps for a good five minutes laugh, my last sight having been that of some sixty pairs of eyes bulging out of their sockets as the lovely Alishya's lovely leg rose out of the scandalously high slash in her skirt.

I was just about over the danger of choking to death when Cyri appeared out of nowhere, or rather out of the Party Room. "Everything alright?" This resulted in another near-fatal crack-up on my part. "Did you, did you notice, like, anything, like, unusual about the singer?" I finally managed to utter.

"Apart from being a lovely girl and a man into the bargain? Nope. No-one else seems to have noticed the latter, though," he continued casually.

"It's, it's just that that is His Royal Highness Prince Ali, heir to the throne of Al-Kharid." 41)

"Is he? Now that's something you don't see every day."

At that point we were both sitting by the fountain, laughter in the dark echoing over the music from the hall.

"'Tis a pity she's a prince. When I left Sloane had drool trickling down his chin."

"Poor guy."

"Don't know. Get him drunk enough and he might broaden his horizons."

"Or become exceedingly near-sighted."

"Happened to better men than 'im."

At that point I realised we were alone.

**b Memo for: WKA X. Alizarin **

**Date: 27.6.170**

**Subject: Letter of Reprimand**

**1****. Investigation has showed that you, u****WKA ****/u did on or about u****26.06.170.****/u Violate the Uniform Code of the Order of the White Knights of Falador, u****SECTION 2, ARTICLE 17, ENGAGING IN BEHAVIOUR INAPPROPRIATE FOR A KNIGHT ****/u**

**by displaying yourself indecently and engaging in acts of a sexual nature, including but not limited to full coitus, with a civilian, in the fountain of the King Raddallin Square in Falador City.**

**As your offence is one of an extremely serious nature, your rank is hereby reduced to **

**u ****WKN**** /uand you will pay a fine of u****300**** /ugold pieces.**

**2. You are hereby reprimanded. Your actions have brought discredit upon yourself and display an ill-judged lack of regard for the UCOWKF, the laws and ordinances of the Kingdom of Asgarnia and the City of Falador as well as for community standards for decency. **

**3. You will acknowledge the receipt of this reprimand.**

**Signed:**

**On the behalf of Sir Amik Varze,**

u**Squire Damnworth,**** /**u** secretary**

**27/6/170/b**

Bugger. Silif, the TKID guy sent to monitor the Bee-Kays, has gone missing in action.

Guess who has to investigate.

This is probably just another form of reprimandatition.

Well, tell you what Sir-yes-Sir-Varze…IT WAS WORTH EVERY DAMN GP AND I'D DO IT AGAIN!

Still 27th, night.

TKID lost contact with Silly last night after his commorb went out right outside the fortress. The connection (according to Savvy) broke for either of two reasons: the orb being destroyed or moving out of the network's reach, such as underground.

Anyway, as am now supposed to deal with this jolly interesting case I fucked my way into, Saving Intelligence Guy Silif, contacted Jonathon who's still slumming at the Jolly Boar and still has an undercover Kinshra for a next-door-neighbour. Cashed in one small favour. The cash will be delivered in the form of a full set of BK armour, complete with a badge of passage and a regimental crest. At the other end Johnnie will keep his roommate civilly sedated with some handy little spell or poison, just for the few days until his armour is safely back in the trunk under his bed and wasn't it damn decent of John to check up on him every day of his illness?

Am so looking forward to this.

Anyhow the mission is to locate Silly and gather any information available about that Squall character. Shouldn't have any problem moving about the fortress what with the armour and Akrisae having a comprehensive dossier on the security measures there. It's a brand new one. It's the answers to the other questions.

**b2****nd**** of Septober, Falador once more/b**

Good news: Mission accomplished.

Bad News: Surok Magis 42)

In an unabridged form: I left for Ice Mountain on 28th , right after receiving my new uniform, teleported to Falador from Aubury's shop in a crate marked "You owe me, Alizarin". Darling Johnny had even packed along some sort of an identity document and a bunch of empty memo forms, each bearing the BK seal on them, as well as an instruction to stick the crest to the helmet visor as that is how it is traditionally worn in the tenth regiment, nicknamed the Bloody Bastards for some unfathomable but doubtlessly unpleasant reason.

I had Savant tamper with some of the forms beforehand; when I left I had seven slightly differently worded documents concerning the moving of a prisoner from Ice Mountain to Taverley as well as a permit to inspect the safety records for the past two months.

I didn't don my new apparel until way in the northern slopes of Mount I. I secured my badge on the visor and a clay tablet containing a teleport spell to the inside of my wrist. Every second after that, every step that took me nearer to the fortress I walked in the fear of running into a supposed brother-in-arms who would ask me for some password or news or tell some insider joke or mistake me for the rightful owner of the armour who happened to be his best mate from their days at the Royal Military Academy and whom they hadn't seen since the Outlawing. 43)

i_Don't swear by Saradomin. Don't swear by Zamorak either. Swear by sweet Zammy on toast or Enakhra's tits or something. Refer to Darrie as his Lordship in the presence of superior officers and Lord Rennard in other contexts. Refer to the White Knights as the Dub-Kays or the Fally lot. _

_And remember the LloI. _/i

By this point of my musings the mighty fortress gates stood in front of me, impregnable as a Grenwall's bum and just about as inviting. I walked with a purpose, reaching for my badge, giving a court nod to the guard –one of those poor indentured bastards who have to work as servants to prove their reliability before being allowed to join the order – who swung the door open for me and saluted with his free hand. 44)

Right armour, right walk. That was all it took, and a guard who's been given extra laundry duty once too many after asking a knight for his papers. I was inside and so far the one out of ten soldiers was elsewhere.

Infiltration mode kicked in.

This was my bloody fortress and I was one of the bloody Bloody Bastards and had more important things to do than talking to a horrible little man like you. The collection of permits, orders and instructions radiated warmth and confidence and security. Now all there was to do was locating whoever was in charge of prisoners and security. As no door displayed a plaque "Person in charge of prisoners and security" I accosted another guard, another tired-looking lad in cheap chainmail whose thoughts were likely revolving around sneaking out for a smoke.

"I say: whearh ah the prisonearh records kept these days?"

The kid cramped to attention and saluted sharp enough to cut air, his eyes twitching in the direction of my forehead. The Bloody Bastards had probably earned their moniker from their own.

"Second floor, Sir! Custody officer's office, Sir! At the end of the corridor, Sir!" One laundry duty too many indeed.

The next part brought one down from one's high. The custody officer would probably be a full-fledged knight and could be of any rank. And Guthix knows, he might be my best mate from the RMA. Second floor, end of the corridor, a polished door plaque bearing the legend "Custody Officer". I knocked. In. I opened the door, getting ready to either salute or to yell and ended up having to do neither.

The man sitting behind the raised desk gave me a lazy half-salute and an even lazier smile, both of which looked appropriate on his chinless face and sabre-tooth overbite, all of it contributing to an overall appearance of an overbred inbred twit. The office suited him as well, with its filing cabinets and shelves lost in a jungle of heraldic shields and banners, the polished mahogany desk and the winged chair on their dais sending the message: My good man, you're dealing with one stuck-up fuck. Lucky for me, the armour and the badge seemed to make me his equal, what the hell ever my name; my uncle was probably his sister's husband who in turn was my father and anyway we were both boys of the RMA.

"What can I do for you then?

"I'm afraid I'm here about the custody records. Got the permit here somewhere if you'll wait a moment."

"Take your time, take your time, from what time do you need them?"

"Past two weeks will suffice. Awfully decent of you."

It was unbelievable. I was rifling my variety of forgerings right in front of the man while he went through his records for the right file.

"There you go, old chap, records from last two weeks of Fent and first of Sept. You got the paper there? Jolly good."

He stamped my license to sully the custody books without as much as a glance at the form Savant had filled out a day ago. The file was laid open on the desk for me to read and I took my time to slide my index finger down the columns, would a name be there or had they killed him on spot, please, god, any god…there it was. 26.6.170, man carrying a TKID commorb, caught near the Wilderness border, imprisoned and to remain imprisoned at the fortress…interrogated on 28th, second interrogation booked for tomorrow.

Now for the hard part. "Oh yars. This is the one, TKID chap caught five days ago. They're moving him to Taverley."

"Are they? What a blow for us. Our chief interrogator was getting to like the fellow."

i_Zammy's tits._/i"Can you sign him over right away?

"Tsk, tsk. You know I would if I could but he's got to be in your physical custody before I can sign for him, you see I'm afraid they're awfully strict about that these days. Now shall we get going, eh?"

Yes. We could get going. I followed the custody man out of his office and down the stairs, down another, smaller set of stairs to the basement…and down a trapdoor. We were standing in a corridor mined in the bedrock, lit by wall torches and descending steeply, longer and deeper than I could see in the flickering light. I followed him down the passage, down a set of rough-hewn steps and through a smaller gap in the rock -to hell. The corridor had opened into a cavern large enough to contain the entire overground fortress, the ceiling hidden in shadows and the walls perforated by doorways into further tunnels. Everywhere around us were men, Kinshra, all of them coming or going in and out of the various doors, carrying crates and files and sacks, all of them moving with a purpose. From further away I could hear the clang of metal against metal, echoed by the hellish yelling of what could only be a drill sergeant. I had never seen so many Black Knights in one place. And I had a feeling rising in my chest that this would be a very, very bad place to get caught at.

My guide didn't seem to pay much attention to his surroundings, saluting casually a few of the men we passed and flashing a badge at a doorman once at the entrance to the cells. There were not many of them, just four or five, simple recesses in the stone with bars blocking the front, too low for a man to stand upright. "This here ought to be your man then, eh?" The custodian had unhooked a lantern from the wall to reveal the cell's inhabitant. It was. That was my man. Or what was left of him. I mouthed out the last sentence, urging a mighty laugh out of the custody officer. That was what was left of Silif. A half-naked, shivering shape curled up on the stone floor, head hidden between arms. When waving the light in his face yielded no response, the man banged it at the bars, causing him to wake with a scream. I could see his face now. His eyes were swollen nearly shut, open just enough to narrow from the flood of light. His mouth was a shapeless black pit of bruised lips and missing front teeth. Judging by the burns on his face and chest the Chief Interrogator was a chain-smoker with inventive ways of putting out his cigarettes. He was trying to crawl away from the bars, whimpering, a trickle of blood running out of the corner of his mangled mouth.

"Now there's need for none of that, boyo. Don't make me do it the hard way. Get up, rise and shine, be a good kid and step up front." All of this was delivered with sick amusement that suggested that he wouldn't in fact mind opting for the hard way at all. "Just get up front, you're not going to be interrogated today so nothing to worry about, eh?" This provoked some response and slowly, laboriously, Silif crawled up to the bars. He left a trail on the floor. "Turn around and hands out." He turned, still kneeled, to tentatively stick his arms out behind him through the bars. That's when I saw his back. It was weave-work of wounds, long, thin welts crisscrossing from shoulders to the small of his back andfinished up with something nastier –irregular, deep tearing wounds. I had once seen similarly shaped scars on the back of man. He had got his from being whipped with a barbed chain. These looked too similar for it to be coincidental.

The custody man chained Silif's wrists, taking care to twist his arms enough for an extra yelp. Unlocking the cell door, he dragged him out by the chain, and with some ceremony, handed the other end to me. He signed over his prisoner, again without a second's hesitation. He walked us out back from the anthill from hell and I did not dare speak again until at the gates, where I thanked him for being such a good sport about the whole thing. I would teleport away to Taverley now. "Wait a second there…" Freeze. With a lash of overgrown fingernails he swiped at Silif's back, tearing open a few scabbed wounds. "Sorry for that, mate, thought there was a fly there. Nice doing business with you too." With this final insult and another half-salute the Custody Officer walked whistling back to the fortress, not sparing a glance at the guard who opened the door for him.

Every second after that, every step I walked further from the fortress I feared that Silif might try and make a break for it. I carried on until well out of sight of any possible spying eyes –then yanked at the chain, grabbed him close and teleported us both home. The last thing that crossed my mind before the world warped was a man we had passed in the tunnels. One that my guide hadn't only saluted but bowed to. A tall man whose cloak didn't quite cover the robes of the Dagon'Hai order, whose hood didn't quite hide all his grey hair and whose voice was as metallic and as the mask he wore. A voice I knew too damn well.

Surok Magis, Head of the Dagon'Hai, wannabe regicide and necromancer extraordinaire, these days an ally of Lucien, going incognito as Mage Squall.

Am back.

Silly's being treated by the WK healers.

Have reported my findings to the CE, the TKID and everyone in between. Going to council tomorrow. Gonna decide what to do about Magis. Gonna get some sleep now.

**b3****rd**** of Septober/b**

Evening, bed.

Why is it that every time the CE has a council the decisions somehow involve getting me in mortal danger? And as a matter of greater importance, am I actually ever going to get paid?

Am going back to Ice Mountain the day after tomorrow so Lunarred to Johnny that his friend will have to remain ill for a little longer. I should be able to get away in the same costume again as one of Savant's assistants –here's the big deal –had managed to break the pendant network cipher and the TKID sent in a message of their own, a receipt about a prisoner from Ice Mountain having been taken into custody at Taverley. They've been monitoring every single channel ever since, the in-flow (to the motherwhatsit) and the outflow (to the pendants) and nothing in there indicates the deceit having been discovered.

A prisoner was signed out and the outsigner received a note of the prisoner having been signed in where he should be signed in.

As I write this, Savant's lot is composing another stowaway message, one concerning an important discovery in the Lumbridge swamp caves, a specimen of which is to be delivered to Mage Squall in person. Gods bless you too, Movvy. I knew you'd come in handy at some point.

(P.S. Cyri was released from custody while I was gone. He got away with a fine. V good.)

**b5/7/170 and I'd be jolly glad to write somewhere else than Falador for a change/b**

Good news: am alive, the whole show went textbook and easy as pie and now everything's gonna be just fucking fine and dandy.

And even now I have to yet again bless Savant and her ingenious and hardworking if a bit insane colleagues who devised up a commorb small enough to hide inside a helmet and a teleorb disguised as a parcel. Not a teleorb in a parcel but a teleorb that looks like a parcel. I'll never get to the bottom of this business.

Anyway. This time around there was no need for precautions and I was teleported half a mile away from the fortress, delivery package at ready and the miniorb jammed against my cheek. Into my left ear poured a steady stream of information from Savvy: samples from messages being received at the moment, anything that might hint at my cover being blown, anything out of the ordinary background hum of jaded spies being over and out or complaining to the central unit about fuzz on the line or ordering crunchies from Aluft Aloft. Arriving yet again at the massive gates I again nodded at a guard –who again opened a door for me. At least the initiates hadn't been told to watch out for a Bloody Bastard with a silly walk. (The latter being a result of the fact that Johnny's mate was probably some three inches taller than me and had had his armour made to measure.) Or they had simply been told to let him in. Never mind. Infiltration mode. You know where you're going; you walk like you own the goddamn place and most importantly you are carrying something. I couldn't rely on risking my friend at the second floor getting any second thoughts about my identity lest he be miraculously turned into the one out of ten –and headed straight for the dungeons, armed with a badge and a parcel.

The abyssal anthill was unchanged. I confronted the first man to wear fewer stripes than myself and demanded the whereabouts of Mage Squall. _Lord _Squall was present, in his office, sir. A demand to be seen to the said office was met with some hesitation, but such which underneath the visor would more likely read "What a little twit" than "Isn't this a bit suspicious?" Let us say that this fine figure of a lad was probably a half of the one out of ten.

At the end he indeed escorted me to a door deep in the stronghold and allowed me to pass with a goodbye whose tone suggested I'd be lucky to get out with all my limbs attached.

So there I was, in Surok Magis' office, holding the ingenious teleparcel and feeling like a first-class idiot. Then a voice came from the shadows, old and metallic.

"What is it?" The moment of reckoning.

"A delivery for you, my lord. Personal, my lord."

And limping it came out of the shadows, as ugly and decrepit as ever, the hunched shoulders and the raspy breath, strands of grey beard sticking at various angles from behind the mask.

"Hand it over."

He was three feet away from me.

"My Lord-"

Three things happened inside one quarter of a second. His hands reached for the parcel and grasped it. I mouthed the word "Off" into the miniorb and at the motherorb, wherever it is, a stand-by command was activated.

As a result the parcelorb wanted to be in Falador and everyone touching it came along for the ride.

The place where the teleorb wanted to be was inside a cell at the castle, and that was where we landed. At the same moment Haze, who had been standing at ready by the bars, knocked us both out with a spell potent enough to wipe out an ogre village. When I woke up Surok was in the cell and I was outside. During our unconsciousness an enchantment had been cast on the cell: No magic –teleportation, telecommunication, curses or missile spells -could be done inside it. It was a completely magic-free area.

That left us with one grumpy old necromancer and an access to Lucien's innermost insider secrets.

In a short: just fucking fine and dandy.

**b7/7/170/b**

The shit has hit it.

They've located the mother unit of the pendant system. The inflow all ends up in a frozen canyon at the eastern edge of Ice Plateau. That's not the big deal yet, though. The big deal goes:

(OL).p.(H).o.(9)

Which in a less sparsely-worded form reads: Our Lord (=Lucien) present (=will be present/will come to)

at home (=Canyon Valley?) on the ninth (of this month).

The second part of the big deal went:

(MS).p.(H).o.(9)

-This one being a stowaway sent by Savvy's Angels. Surok is supposed to be gone until 9th, when he will come to meet his master at the home base.

On other news, I returned Johnny's mate's armour today and the guy miraculously recovered from his fever in a matter of hours. Good for him. Anyway, I won't be needing that anymore. Not now that I I've got a robe and a mask.


	6. Chapter 3

**b12****th**** of Septober, Taverley/b**

He's dead.

They're all dead.

The orders read:

b**Alizarin to base as SM. Mission: Locate L. Avoid contact. REC-ORB**

**Others stand-by at 20,30N; 17,5E, ready tele to 20,45N; 16,30E** /b

I went to the base as S.M. I located L. I did not make contact but contact was made to me. I was discovered.

The others were at stand-by at 20,30 minutes north, 17,5 degrees east. Upon my discovery, they teleported to 20,45 degrees north, 16,30 east. Then they died.

I didn't.

I was teleported right outside the Ice Mountain fortress on the 9th of Septober, wearing the clothes of Surok Magis, enhanced with a commorb inside the mask, a rec-orb in the cloak buckle and a teleorb inside the robes. I entered the fortress unheeded for the third time. I wasn't bothered on the way to the dungeons. I wasn't bothered on my way through the dungeons. I wasn't bothered when I ordered the guards in Surok's quarters away. They left without a word, bowing on their way out.

It was all based on inferences made by the TKID from the timing of messages. There were messages about (MS) being at (H) and after those could come messages about (MS) being anywhere. But somewhere before (MS) could occur at home, he always occurred in (B), the Ice Mountain fortress…i Hence, an entrance, likely to be a magical one, to (H) has to be at (B), likely in his own quarters as no other person we know of follows this pattern of movement…/i

(From the briefing report)

It was. It was an open portal in a separate chamber, a glowing ring in the middle of the floor. If it was a recognizer, it was set to recognize an item, maybe the mask, or the pendant or something in the robes, not a person. It let me through at once. I was in the dungeon, there was a flash of light, and I was not in the dungeon. I was in Canyon Valley.

The commorb line was cut down at once, whether due to sheer distance or the vicinity of the pendant mother unit or the vertical walls of frozen stone rising two storeys high on each side. Despite the distance the place seemed little more than an attachment to the Ice Mountain dungeons. There were guards and there were soldiers, some of them Kinshra, some of them wearing unfamiliar uniforms. I was stood aside for and bowed to by them regardless of insignia or rank. At a junction between the original canyon and additional mined grooves I found a man, or a man-shaped creature, with enough stripes to know what was happening. I demanded if Lord Lucien had arrived. Yes, my lord. He was down east by the chapel. Should he announce- No. I followed the only eastbound groove, eventually ending at a set of crudely hewn steps leading up to the edge of the canyon. Up on the ridge the line cleared at once, a monotone repeating my coordinates and altitude, a centre of disturbance was moving around some four hundred feet south-east, repeat, a centre of disturbance…A walkway had been constructed there, invisible from below save for the length bridging the gap between the ridgetop and the roof of the chapel at its foot. I crossed over to the roof, rounding the towerlet crowning the tumbledown shrine for a direct view down. Down east.

Amid the barren wasteland stood a lone figure, the single interruption on the plain of dust stretching from one horizon to another. A skeletal creature standing nine foot tall, robed and hooded, leaning on a nondescript length of wood. For quite a while it seemed deep in contemplation until reaching a decision -straightening its back it raised its staff high in the air, mouthing words I could not hear and the infertile sprouted dead men, mummified skeletons in two thousand-year-old armour. They crawled and writhed out of their graves until standing, an unassembled crowd, around their waker, who flicked his withered hand –and the dead soldiers saluted. It saw this was good and then turned its mind to other matters.

i You are not Surok. /i

I saw a flash of dark fly by.

It hit the turret, shattering it in an explosion of shards of stone with a wave of power taking me down. And while I laid in the debris safe and sound the others at stand-by teleported to 20,45 north, 16,30 east. That's where they died.

Their intention was to draw Lucien away from me and that's what they did. He regarded them for a while with what might have been anything from disdain to curiosity. Six men, an elder demon and a tree gnome. All the while his regiment stood guard, frozen to attention, awaiting orders. For now they could wait.

The staff rose again, taking a swipe at the air and something dark and vicious burst from its end. It hit Ghommal and Sloane, who stood side by side up front, fearless and prepared.

They were incinerated where they stood.

There never was a flash or a flame, just the two of them, then a scorched spot and a heap of ashes on the ground. The wind scattered them.

Nothing could have ever protected them, least me on my chapel roof.

The next one took down three of them. Turael, Duradel and Cyrisus.

The last time ever I'd see him he was crouched, preparing for a blow he could never take, too far away on the other side, then disintegrating into dust and carried away.

There was nothing I could do.

All I ever saw was a flash of deadly dark and they were all slain, three at once, each man breaking into a handful of dust and were never heard of again.

Now its attention was turned to the remaining three, a gnome, a demon and the last man. It became Hazelmere's last stand. I saw him, an armoured figure four feet high, something silvery glittering in his hand. He stood there and looking the Mahjarrat in the eye sent a wave of light and ice at him. He never flinched when the strike broke in the air surrounding the thing. He stood there, calm and ready, knowing what would happen. The third blast killed him, leaving for a moment cinder statue, broken by the next breath of air.

The thing turned, momentary distraction swept aside, back to me.

I felt the world warp when I died.

An unknown officer at TKID had touched a key that overran all the user commands in the teleorb against my chest. And the second Lucien turned, the second the key was touched, the orb went home. So did those of Mazchna and Harrallak, lying unconscious on the ground from the wave of the hit that killed Hazelmere. We were brought home by a nameless call.

**b13th of Septober/b**

I woke up here two days ago.

Both Rally and Maz had pretty bad injuries so they brought us here instead of Fally so the headstanders could patch us up a treat.

They work you to the bone, hose you down, patch you up and send you back. That's what Zed's always said. He came to see me yesterday. The old man seems well enough. He didn't comment on anything so I guess not getting killed when your mates do is okay if it's not your fault. 45)

They hose you down, patch you up and send you back until you come back feet first.

He had wanted to get out of the game alive, he said. He realised that at Edgeville in 154. That's when he decided to retire.

He never said whose side he fought on there.

**b15****th**** of Septober, still in Taverley/b**

Maz left today. He was never in mortal danger on the account of being immortal but they managed to prevent him from getting disembodied or something. Ral's better but won't duel anyone again. He'll be heading home the day after tomorrow. Things to arrange, people to hire, two sets of quarters to clear out for new inhabitants.

Neither one of them apparently had much in the way of a family. The WG was their home just as much as it's his.

Same date. Night.

Ral asked if I'd be interested in a job at the guild, as a trainer.

Having a place to stay at, a job and a wage. The company of Ral and the guild folks, the IG and the gentlemen in the basement of the Toad and the Chicken. Breezy winters, hazy summers and a days journey to Taverley. Told him had things to do. Unfinished ones. Once I was done –once I was done, the offer would still stand. 46)

**b18/7/170/b **

They hose you down, patch you up and send you back.

TKID received a message from Dorgesh-Kaan today, from who the hell ever they've got in there, that a human scientist is poking around at the chasm of lights. One by the name of Movario. And as long as I'm on two feet the CE's sending me.

The orders read:**b**

**Target name: Movario**

**Mission: kill**

**Target location: Dorgesh-Kaan /surrounding area**

**Target safety: RED/b**

One dead man coming up.


	7. Chapter 4

i_The following report, compiled by Marshal Idria, was not included in the journal and was most likely never even read by Xanina. I decided nevertheless to include it between entries rather than in the footnotes, as without it the final entry would remain entirely incomprehensible to the reader._

_D.D._/i

b** Memo for: CE**

**Date: 22.7.170**

**Subject: Operation report, Lucien**

**1. Concerning the recent movements of the Mahjarrat Lucien, the Stone of Jas and the likelihood of another God War.**

**2. According to the latest information the artefact referred to as the Stone of Jas (henceforth: SoJ) was located on the 19****th**** of Septober, 170, in a previously undisclosed Guthixian Temple underneath the Lumbridge Caves [COORDINATES WITHHELD] by a field operative of the Crux Eqal. On the same date the temple was entered by force by the Mahjarrat Lucien, who took into his possession the SoJ prior to leaving the temple via teleportation. The current locations of Lucien and the SoJ are unknown.**

**3. L. was first confirmed to have an interest in the SoJ in Fentuary 170, in documents obtained from the residence of Dr. Movario, a researcher known to be collaborating with L.,and who according to said documents was in charge of locating the Stone.**

**M. was located on 18****th**** of Septober, 170, in Dorgesh-Kaan, by [NAME WITHHELD], an intelligence officer of the TKID stationed in the city. On the same day WKN, TKPros., X. Alizarin of the CE was commissioned to exterminate M. as a threat to worldwide security. **

**CEO Alizarin made contact with M. on the 19****th**** of Septober, 170, at the Chasm of Lights, a little-investigated area in the Lumbridge Caves inhabited by sentient but speechless beings of light assumed to be the last remains of "The Myriad", a race driven to extinction during the 3****rd**** Age.**

**Acting contrary to her orders CEO Alizarin did not immediately proceed to exterminate M. but contacted him, presenting herself as a fellow collaborator of L.'s in order to acquire information about the intentions of L. It is noteworthy that while Alizarin knew about the existence of the SoJ, she had not been informed of its significance. Should court martial proceedings be brought against her this is to be considered a mitigating circumstance. **

**The events from this point on are uncertain as Alizarin, the CE's only witness on the case, was in an unstable state when giving her statement on 20****th**** of Septober and has since not been contacted successfully. **

**According to her report, Alizarin managed to convince M. that she was a member of L.'s intelligence body and had been commissioned to assist M. in his research. M. then disclosed his intention to descend to the bottom of the Chasm of Lights, where he presumed the Stone to be. Alizarin, who had previously studied the Chasm and its inhabitants lured a light being to contact with her and manipulated it to descend into the chasm using a "coloured light". The creature left her at a landing at least half a mile below the edge of the chasm but which evidently was not its bottom. On the landing Alizarin discovered the skeletons of several humans and cave goblins who most likely had died falling into the chasm, as well as the remnants of several standing torches from an unknown era. Further contradicting her orders Alizarin proceeded to investigate another cave opening into the landing which she stated she recognised as "having to do with Guthixian worship as some giant snake-haired skull carvings had been fashioned into the walls." Deeper in the cave she discovered the aforementioned temple dedicated to Guthix, likely to have been built during the second age and employed as a safe for the SoJ since the beginning of the 5th age. (Information confirmed.)**

**Alizarin's description of the following events was extremely unclear. She made references to "freeing druid spirits" and "a giant stone circle rising to open the gate". No clarification to her narrative was found but confirmedly she somehow managed to unlock a mechanism that opened a door leading further to the temple complex and eventually to the hall containing the SoJ. Alizarin stated that she recognised the artefact and "decided to have a look at it." She apparently touched the stone. **

**It is most likely that this, a physical contact with "an unfathomably powerful magical object, the very source of runestones and thus of all magic on Gielinor" (As described by druid Thaerisk Cemiphier of the CE) was the cause of her following short-term memory loss, an incredible increase in physical ability and eventually, once these initial effects subsided, the near-psychotic state she was in upon reporting.**

**Another result of touching the SoJ was some kind of a guardian spirit waking up and attacking Alizarin. She described the spirit as "having a body made of air, water, fire and earth and being very nice apart from trying to kill me." She vaguely referred to having battled the spirit and eventually killing it, "When it died it said it had been nice meeting me and it was now going over home to Guthix." None of this information has been confirmed.**

**It is evident that by this time M., presuming that his scout had died but still convinced of the SoJ's location, decided to directly contact Lucien. The following is pure speculation, but I presume that he mentioned "the assistant sent to him" which would have made it clear to L. that an infiltrator had found M. In any case, L. himself soon appeared at the Chasm and the two followed Alizarin's trail, eventually reaching the Stone. **

**At 23:27, Septober the 19****th****, the CE received an S.O.S. originating from the TKID commorb registered to CEO Alizarin. The third section of the Guardians of Armadyl, temporarily lead by myself, teleported to the location of the commorb five minutes after the signal was sent.**

**It was apparently during these five minutes that L., after briefly confronting Alizarin, teleported away with the SoJ, summoning before his departure two demonic beings to finish off Alizarin, whom he evidently had recognized as the infiltrator who had invaded the Canyon Valley base on the 9****th**** of Septober, 170. (See memo for CE, 10.7.170 on subject Lucien) The third section found Alizarin engaged in battle with the demons in a trance-like state with what seemed to be superhuman strength. The demons were defeated by 00:06, 20****th**** of Septober, 170. After their vanishing the third section teleported back to Falador, myself excluded. Alizarin refused to teleport or to be teleported and eventually delivered her report, documented on a REC-orb, on the spot. **

**When questioned about breaching her orders Alizarin stated that "It had seemed like a good idea at the time" and that "She felt it was something important."**

**Having finished her report, Alizarin informed me that she was ready to go. She then teleported to an unknown location and has not been reached since.**

**4. The current whereabouts and intentions of L. are not known but it is likely that his ultimate goal is an ascent to godhood. He has acquired the two artefacts used by the Mahjarrat Zamorak in his Ascent at the end of the 2****nd**** Age, the Staff of Armadyl and the Stone of Jas. (What role of the Stone played in Zamorak's Ascent is unknown, but it is believed that he used it for temporarily increasing his powers.) If L. is trying to reconstruct the strategy of his one-time master, his Ascent would require a third element; the physical presence of a major deity to draw power from. The entry of a deity to Gielinor would most likely result in another God War or according to the so called "Guthixian Edicts" the direct collapse of the entire plane.**

**Signed: **

**Idria, Marshal of the Guardians of Armadyl /b**

_**i What happened to Xanina between teleporting away from the Stone temple and signing in at the Jolly Boar Inn, Varrock, on the 27**__**th**__** of Septober remains unknown. During this time the CE tried, to no avail, to contact her via both her commorb and the Lunar magics.**_

_**From the final entry in her journal, eventually abandoned on the bedside table of room four, it is nevertheless evident that the effects of the events at the cave, including touching the Stone, combined with her recent losses, had by this time built up to insanity./i**_

**b27/7/170, Jolly Boar, Varrock/b**

They hose you down, patch you up and send you in front of the crossbow squad.

Well, ain't nobody gonna call me to be hosed down or patched up anymore, not with all my orbs in shards. And you're not poking around in my head either. Which one of us knows our Lunar spells better, mister Cemiphier? Which one of us spent weeks talking about their mechanisms by a sickbed in Sirsalis? You stay the hell out of my head and go stand on your own.

Johnny's gone for a student and back to Yanille. So said my next-door neighbour, an Asgarnian standing half a head taller than me, still a tad pale from a freak illness. I don't want to kill him.

I first heard of him tracking an explorer type by the name of Movario. An undercover Kinshra stationed in an inn of ill repute by the Wilderness border. I wonder what he did to deserve it.

Found Movario. Didn't kill him. I heard Iddy mutter something about a court-martial to her commorb while she thought I was out. Can't start getting court-martialled at my time of life so sodded off all unpaid. Got unfinished business.

And it will remain unfinished until there is no Lucien left at all.

Because you see my lord, I don't think you quite appreciate what you did.

I do not believe that you entirely understand what you did one night in one Septober.

Not even after you tore my face open and dragged out my soul for myself to see and laughed over the sight, I still don't think you understand.

That is what he did, down in the dark, underneath the world where it was just me and him. The Stone stood on its plinth, I stood between him and the stone and he stood towering over me, regarding me with what might have been anything from disdain to curiosity.

Then he reached into my mind and tore it open wide.

I could feel a consciousness touching mine and then he was in my head. There was a picture he wanted me to see. It was a picture of a slutty-looking woman in black dragonhide armour, dirty red hair falling over her face as she eyed the stranger on the other side of the table, guilty fingers toying with an empty glass. Her addled drunkard's thoughts revolved around if the stranger had some disease she might catch and how high she could negotiate the price of sleeping with him. How many more glasses of whiskey fifteen minutes against a wall would buy?

No, I don't quite believe you do.

And that's what will buy you some extra time.

Because of what you did, because you can't comprehend the consequence of the way you took advantage of the disadvantage of my weakling race, you will have some extra time on this plane of existence.

I have more important things to attend to.

I will have to make sure they weren't trapped. I have to see that nothing of them was left behind and if something was, to see that they will be allowed to rest. That they can put down the weapons they can't wield anymore.

But please, some god, any god, Saradomin of wisdom, for the sake of your enemy's ally; Zamorak of chaos for the sake of your deceiver; Guthix of balance for the sake of a breaker of balance; Bandos of war to bring forth further battles; Serene of eternal light to drive away the drawing dark; Armadyl of justice and duty to punish a thief, let there be something rest of him, something, anything, a spirit, a shadow, a wrath so I can see him one last time, vow vengeance and see them to their eternal rest.

Let me see your vision form in the realm of shadows or that of spirits and I will commit my soul to any god that sees me to you. Let me tell you there was nothing I could do. Let me tell you that I was too far away and it all happened too fast, too soon. Let me see you once more.

I pray I see you in any realm, any day.

Item: Shadow realm: Cursed ones only? Wraths? Restless spirits? Do these belong to shadows or ghosts?

Item: Portals. Created on places carrying spiritual significance –what brings this significance? A curse from the weapon of a god, wielded by a powerful being, destroying six lives at once? Nothing's known of when the portals were created and if new ones can still come to existence. 47)

Unfinished business.

Wrongs to right.

What the hell ever.

I stay and I pray I see you somewhere, some day.

To these words ends the last diary of Xanina Alizarin. Mr. Glitch of the Jolly Boar confirmed that Xanina left without signing out for what he presumed would be a day trip to the Wilderness on the evening of Septober 29th, 170.

A week later –a week during which Mr. Glitch presumed her gone for good, a week during which the CE and Mr. Enroy tried to contact her in vain- Xanina's body was found by an officer of the TKID near the chapel on whose roof she had watched her brothers-in-arms die. As stated in the preface, her cause of death remains a mystery. While the injuries speak on the behalf of a missile spell, no trace of its caster was found. Whether she fell prey to a guard of Lucien's patrolling the walkways or to one of the restless wraths forever haunting the barren lands of the Wilderness, will probably never be known.

Repeating what I said in the preface, she was insufficiently prepared to travel in such a dangerous place. She had on her provisions for a few days journey, no weapons save for a carving-knife, and the three items of jewellery: a primitive amulet carved of bone and two rings –one of them a nondescript, thin, gold one and the other an antique, dating most likely back to the 4th age, its decorative carvings worn smooth. The skin of her left middle finger, around which the latter was worn, was bloodied and chafed, as if the ring hade been rubbed around it continuously.

What else to say? She was buried in Edgeville, the landlord sold her possessions and I bought some of them, kept the diary and buried the rest by her grave. Patting down the old, dead soil I recalled the ludicrous explanation she had given to a friend on why she had undertaken the seemingly worthless effort of being accepted as a Fremmenik:

i They've got the best eternity. When a Fremmy warrior dies one of these women riding winged horses fetches them and takes them to this longhall in the land of gods and giants. And in that longhall there'll be food and drink and you get to see all your dead mates again. Then you'll feast and drink there with all your fallen friends until the end of the world comes about and you fight in this big battle between the gods and the underworld gods and the sky-gods will win. Don't know what happens then. But it sounds so far so good so it can't be anything I can't handle, can it?/i


End file.
